Tunis, New York and Other “Occupied” Cities: Neighbors in the Newly-Aroused Vox Populi Global Community

Credit: CNN

It’s now apparent that Tunis and the many newly-“Occupied” cities are virtual neighbors – not geographically, of course, but in the newly-aroused global Vox Populi Community. These “neighbors”, although in vastly different societies, have common fundamental demands: “justice”, “fairness” and “voice”.

In this historic year of 2011 something seminal seems to have entered the global ether. The successful October Tunisian elections remind us that what began in the January demonstrations in Tunis has spread throughout North Africa, the Middle East and, in the U.S., first to “Occupy Wall Street” in New York and then to “Occupy” cities across the country and well beyond. Fundamentally, that “something” is the eruption of long-repressed and/or greatly frustrated citizenry demanding change – existential change of governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (with Syria and Yemen in the wings) and systemic adjustment in many other countries.

The ultimate outcomes are varying greatly. Autocrats have fallen, economic systems are being shaken. Establishment leaders everywhere should wonder whether, truly, “this time it’s different” — whether the evolving global network society is not only transmitting, but also magnifying, the power of public opinion. (Mark Twain once wrote that some think of public opinion as “the voice of God.”)

Bridging The Divide

Our good friends at Bridging The Divide, the Washington D.C. based international non-governmental-organization linking civil society across international borders on behalf of peace, rights issues and good governance (www.bridging-the-divide.org), have put the case compellingly. David R. Holdridge, CEO: “Sovereignty is not what it used to be … Now the technologies and a youth fed up with war and despair are silently, but inexorably, creating a union … They are, in historic proportions, going on line. They are accelerating daily the great trade in ideas over The World Wide Web.”

The epic changes achieved in North Africa this year, once thought a quixotic mission, should give inspiration to the currently exercised vox populi in the U.S. Whether sitting in at “Occupy” sites or inactive but confounded by what appears to be a largely dysfunctional national government, these Americans might well consider a commitment to perhaps an equally quixotic – and yet seminal – mission, “Get Special Interests Money Out Of Politics.”(Surely, to be sustainable, the “Occupy” movements must soon articulate a specific, focused message and a political destination that will resonate among the middle class and the political center.)

Americans For Campaign Reform

The “special interests” mission has, of course, been addressed in fits and starts for decades. But now, the great national attention being paid to perceived vast economic disparity in America – think, “the 99% vs. 1%” – presents an opportunity for renewed action and long-delayed impact. An epicenter for this admittedly Sisyphian effort may well coalesce around the non-profit Americans For Campaign Reform (www.ACRreform.org).

ACR, chaired by four prestigious former U.S. Senators – Bill Bradley, Bob Kerrey, Warren Rudman and Alan Simpson (two Democrats, two Republicans) – is a non-partisan organization championing public funding as an alternative to the special interests campaign finance well ingrained in U.S. national politics and magnified by last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

ACR has summarized this systemic national issue quite well: “Congress hasn’t solved the most pressing challenges facing our country…because our leaders must cater to the special interests that fund campaigns.” Championing public funding for federal races – President, Senate and House – ACR seeks citizen support for proposed legislation, The Fair Elections Act (S.752 and HR. 1826), to achieve what Senator Bradley envisions: “the power rest[ing] with voters, not with special interests.”

Or, to interpret this goal in another vernacular, ACR seeks the triumph of the marketplace of ideas over the influence of the dollar.

Americans can gain inspiration from those people abroad who, with courage and perseverance against all odds, are grappling with the momentous challenges they have generated, nothing less than evolving fundamentally new political systems to improve their quality of life.

Take a Bow

Now that the big Asia trip is history, it’s natural to judge it on the basis of known results from its biggest portion — Obama’s three days in China. For the American president, there were no obvious breakthroughs on exchange rates or trade, climate or human rights, so maybe this visit was not the most successful. On the other hand, viewed in the context of America’s recent history with East Asia, there was a certain welcome absence of drama. Expectations were managed, there was no brinkmanship. Maybe that could be considered an achievement.

What is disturbing, though, on the face of it, was the lack of open transmission of the President’s own message to the Chinese people while he was in their country. You can say that the Chinese leaders are determined to control their media environment, but to essentially shut down broadcasts of a U.S. President’s communication with students shows a real gap in understanding. Even Gorbachev understood that an advanced society could not control communication if it wanted to make the most of its potential. During the U.S. President’s visit at least, China stood to gain internationally by showing openness rather than its opposite. What they did instead was unnecessary.

By the same token, Obama’s exaggerated bow to Japanese Emperor Akihito in Tokyo was also a misstep.

A Bow Too Low

In our digital age, images stay around, and this one will. If Americans were feeling self-confident about their role in the world at this point in time, the bow would have been seen as an act of protocol, courtesy and even magnanimity. In our current times of American insecurity, it will seen back home as weak. Moreover, even Japanese found it inappropriate.

You Can Bank on It

An overseas trip by a U.S. president is always costly, logistically challenging, and full of colorful backdrops. President Obama’s trip to Japan, Singapore, China and Korea is no exception. If anything, there will be more excitement than usual, since it is his first trip to the region as President and there is still tremendous foreign public interest in this appealing, young, intelligent leader, his inspiring speeches, and his photogenic wife.

Why, then, is the mood so downbeat among the U.S. press corps — the “traveling press” — as they begin covering this trip?

The discouraging U.S. jobs reports with alarming unemployment rates provide part of the answer. Another reason: Obama’s narrow win in the House vote on health care last Saturday revealed his Democratic Party to be quite divided. A respected poll showed the American public, never very warm toward Congress as an institution, now tending to favor Republicans over Democrats there. Finally, the national tragedy of Ft. Hood, followed by an especially somber Veterans’ Day holiday, drove home the pressures on the U.S. military as it tries to cope with insurgent warfare in extremely complicated circumstances.

When the President returns home, there will be an announcement to make on Afghanistan strategy, while health care reform and regulation for Wall Street are debated. More heavy lifting for a President reported to be losing weight.

Maybe, after all, this is a good time for the President to experience a change of scene — even if it will seem in Beijing like he’s on a visit to America’s banker.

Obama in the Classroom

Hopefully, the East Asian public will be drawn into the novelty of the visit and the “traveling press” of the American media will report on the public esteem that Obama enjoys abroad.

One thing you can bank on: the White House will not be looking for photo ops in opulent surroundings. American public diplomacy and White House politics are both best served by images of a hard-working and popular President seen focusing on the tough issues. That part should not be difficult.

New Media, Old Truths

Many journalists and commentators have examined and illuminated the role of new media and technology in the on-going protests in Iran. Exposing the electoral fraud perpetrated by Ahmedinejad last year and the violent repression of resultant protests certainly called for the skill of traditional journalists and the new media capabilities of Iranian citizen witnesses and participants. Since there were few foreign correspondents able to report first-hand from Teheran last summer, the “I Reports” sent to the world by ordinary Iranians were critically important in getting the truth out.

But what of the protests and conflict in Gaza and the West Bank? A few months earlier, during a two-week long Israeli military operation in Gaza, more than a thousand Palestinians were killed. By all accounts, most of these casualties were civilians.

Just as traditional journalism was restricted by Iranian authorities in the aftermath of the June Iranian elections, Israeli authorities placed severe restrictions on Western journalists trying to cover the Israeli incursion in Gaza in 2008-2009.

In fact, just as non-traditional media were and are critical to getting the word out on what was happening in Teheran, the same kinds of media are essential to bearing witness as to what has transpired — and continues to transpire — in Gaza and the West Bank.

One of the few scholars doing real research on the role of new media and technology in the occupied West Bank and Gaza is Charmaine Stanley, a graduate student at the University of Toronto. She spoke last week at the International Studies Association convention in New Orleans. You can listen to my interview with her here.

One of the striking aspects to Stanley’s findings is the way that smart phone technology not only communicates “actuality” about events — video recordings and “tweets” — but also serves to organize political protest. This technology has been instrumental in linking Palestinians and Israeli Jews who advocate peaceful change. During the Gaza incursion by the Israeli military, Stanley reports, the Israeli peace movement managed to give Palestinians video cameras they could use to record and transmit video images of the violence. Eventually some of these images found their way into mainstream media.

In response, Stanley notes, the Israeli military gave their own forces cameras so that they could themselves record incidents that implicated Palestinians. Since Israeli authorities had clamped down on foreign media access, they couldn’t hope that foreign correspondents would get that story.

Iranian authorities have shown a capacity and a willingness to shut down access to the Internet, but eventually citizen journalists find a work-around. Israeli authorities also have the capacity to control Internet access and monitor, trace and track the many Palestinians they suspect of disloyalty. But here too peaceful protesters have shown enough courage and commitment to get their message out.

We can’t yet foresee how these new media measures and counter-measures will end, only hope that they may lead those contemplating large scale violence to think again.

It would be great if the proliferation of digital recording devices and access to Internet served to deter violence. Better still if the only weapons drawn in Gaza and the West Bank were smart phones and cameras.

Wake up, America!

I had just returned to the States from a relatively innocuous tour in The Bahamas as a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State. The most personally significant event during my time in Nassau was meeting and marrying my Romanian-born wife. My onward assignment was to Moscow, Russia with a year of intensive Russian-language training beforehand. So in August, 2001, with my new bride in tow, I headed to Washington, DC to begin my training. Most diplomatic training takes place at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington, Virginia, but we decided to live in the District and took temporary quarters at the infamous Watergate Hotel next to the State Department. This was all part of my plan to immerse my foreign-born spouse in the wonders and history of our Nation’s Capital. For two weeks, life was good.

September 11th was a gorgeous day up and down the eastern seaboard—cool, crisp, and not a cloud in the sky. A day you felt great to be alive. I had just settled down in my Russian class when a rather rattled classmate burst through the door exclaiming, “A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” My first thought was that this was just a repeat of 1945, when a B-25 bomber accidentally flew into the Empire State Building in heavy fog, killing 14 people. However, a growing commotion in the hallway outside our classroom caused us all to rush out the door, despite our Russian teacher’s protests. In the common area, students had gathered around a TV, which was tuned to CNN. The unforgettable image of planes crashing into the World Trade Center seemed totally surreal. As we watched in morbid fascination, a friend who was in Spanish-language training joined me and relayed a bizarre observation. He said that while in class, he had witnessed an airliner fly past his classroom window at tree-top level. No sooner had he told me this then we heard a loud bang. At the time we simply thought someone had slammed a door, having no idea that American Airlines Flight 77 had just crashed into the Pentagon.

By now, it was obvious the United States was under attack. Mass hysteria was also kicking in, fed by the media. The shock of witnessing spectacular attacks on American icons created not only a feeling of helplessness, but fed into a growing panic. Reports of car bombs outside the State Department and the Capitol led us to believe the federal government was being targeted. FSI administrators announced that FSI was being evacuated, as it too was considered a target. We were also informed that all bridges and access points in and out of Washington were being closed. All I could think of was my poor wife back in the middle of a war zone as I hopped in my jeep and drove like hell to get back there. I beat the road closures and found my wife in our hotel room, transfixed to the television in the same state of disbelief that had affected us all. After several hours trapped in our room, witnessing the endless footage of death and destruction, I became stir-crazy and felt the need to be around other people. I called a friend and we agreed to meet for a drink. I will never forget walking down the middle of normally bustling streets, not a soul in sight with the exception of soldiers setting up watch posts on certain street corners. As we crossed an empty Pennsylvania Avenue it hit me—life as I knew it was over.

In the weeks and months that followed, chaos seemed to reign, especially in the Capital. Air travel was halted, barriers and security appeared everywhere, and the city seemed more like a military installation than a tourist destination. Smoke from the Pentagon’s fires seemed to linger forever and the once self-important population now had an air of paranoia about it. However, 10 years later, most have adjusted. Post-9/11 means longer lines at airport security checks, otherwise life has returned to normal. Osama bin Laden is finally dead and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq seem to be drawing down. Jobs and the economy are first and foremost in the minds of most Americans. Yes, as we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11, our focus is once again on our domestic issues. This anniversary is a remembrance of all those who lost their lives on that fateful day 10 years ago, but it should also serve as a reminder of why the tragedy took place. America the invincible is vulnerable. In looking back, we need to see 9/11 as wake-up call.

In Samuel Huntington’s, “The Clash of Civilizations” and the eponymous theory that was put forth, Huntington argued that people’s cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. Huntington maintained that it was not only wrong, but also egotistical and dangerous to think that Western civilization should be thought of as a universal civilization. Western civilization is just one of the major civilizations, and since older classic civilizations tend to strongly reject the influence of others, Western civilization is not likely to become a universal civilization.

The fundamental role of the classic civilization has always been to maintain and preserve the established forms of social life. This is clearly the goal of Islamic extremists and even many mainstream Muslims—the establishment and preservation of an Islamic state, governed solely by strict Sharia law. However, Western civilization possesses irresistible attractions on several levels and herein lies the dilemma for classic civilizations. The affluent consumer lifestyle brought about by successful Western civilizations becomes a subject to be talked about with envy in non-Western regions. This “threat” posed by the Western powers generates an inevitable nationalist response to the inroads of these industrial intruders. Classic civilizations must either embrace modernization or risk becoming economic and political subjects of the West. The nationalistic response to this clash of civilizations is the rise of fundamentalist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which look to repel the intruders by any means possible.

In looking back pre-9/11, it is easy to recall those halcyon days of naïveté, when America’s enemies were an ocean away. We were like the small town where nobody needed to lock their doors at night. The enemy was always out there; we just thought their methods too crude to reach us at home—at least not in the tragic and spectacular manner in which they did. The U.S. may still be a super-power, but as we saw 10 years ago, we are far from invulnerable. We must ask ourselves what have we done in the last 10 years to alter the paradigm? Have we done anything to mitigate this clash of civilizations, or have we only exacerbated it? Did America get woken up only to hit the snooze button? If so…

Historical vs. Material vs. Ideal Baselines: Evaluating Obama

An essay in New York Magazine by Jonathan Chait this weekend has rebooted the standard debate about the “professional left” and why liberals can’t bring themselves to love Obama despite his accomplishments (see Sullivan for a supporting salvo). Chait tries to argue that there’s something in the progressive psyche that’s “incapable of being satisfied with a Democratic president” due to a persistent “failure to compare Obama with any plausible baseline.” Chait then rolls through the historical record of Democratic presidents back through FDR, noting that they’ve always been castigated from the left, and concluding that there’s just something inherently unreasonable about the liberal mentality on this score.

I’m inclined to partly agree with Chait, but it’s an important “partly.” I have found myself exceptionally disappointed by many elements of Obama’s leadership – his solidification of the Bush-era civil liberties regime and his inability to grasp the magnitude of the 2008-2009 economic crises stand out as the cardinal sins in my book – but I often find myself taking “his” side in debates with progressive friends. Healthcare, for all its compromises, was an epic victory. He’s handled the Arab Spring reasonably well. He’s withdrawing American forces from Iraq. He found and killed Osama bin Laden. These are accomplishments and should be recognized as such. Furthermore, he’s facing down an opposition party that has moved beyond intransigence and into the realm of political nihilism, and an allied party that is far from unified around a progressive agenda. And Chait is right that if you simply start listing accomplishments, Obama compares pretty well to most Democratic presidents that anyone alive can remember. Chait’s remark about “plausible baselines,” though, needs a bit of unpacking, and makes progressive disappointment a bit more understandable.

To my mind, at least for the purposes of a barroom conversation about presidential performance, there are three metrics to use, between which most people tend to oscillate without realizing it. The first is what you might call comparative historical: stacking up Obama’s leadership against that provided by other Democratic presidents and seeing where he stands. I think the President does pretty well in this regard, but that says more about the weakness of the field than it does about his abilities. Clinton governed as a moderate Republican, and the medium-term blame for our current economic crisis falls at least partly on the shoulders of his policies. Carter was dealt a crappy political, cultural and economic hand, which he played poorly; there’s a reason a guy like Reagan was so popular in 1980. Johnson, well, Vietnam; ’nuff said. Much as it’s heretical for me to say this, Kennedy makes a better historical symbol than he ever did a President, though his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis will always keep him high on my list. Truman gets unfairly maligned, but, well, Korea; ’nuff said. Roosevelt was fantastic largely in retrospect; the long-run effects of his labor policies, creation of the Social Security Administration, bank regulation, war leadership etc. transformed American society largely for the better; but, the fact is he didn’t handle the Great Depression well in an economic sense, and he did round up Japanese-Americans and throw them into internment camps. So on that list Obama looks pretty good.

A second way to judge Obama is based on his ability to enact policies appropriate to the magnitude of the issues they mean to address. By this metric, he doesn’t look so impressive. His stimulus package, while large enough to cover immediate local government budget shortfalls and keep the economy from diving headlong into Great Depression part deux, wasn’t sufficient to avert years of economic stagnation. He expressed some decent ideas about infrastructure repair, alternative energy development and material renewal, then seemed to drop them at the first sign of concerted opposition. Furthermore, he hasn’t really made the case to the American people for a broad progressive agenda, so on crucial issues he’s conceded the discursive field as well as the material one.

A third metric is idealist: measuring the President’s performance based on his ability to push for the kind of society progressives want to see. I’m overgeneralizing, but I’d wager most American progressives want a society that looks more like other Western social democracies, with more robust redistributive mechanisms, stronger social services, expanded material rights, lower inequality etc: a model somewhere between Canada and Sweden. To the extent that Obama hasn’t put the U.S. on a path to that kind of society – and he emphatically hasn’t – progressives are understandably disappointed.

Chait gets at this a bit with his note that Obama hasn’t been a “transformational” president in the mold of Reagan or Roosevelt; but, he presents this as largely about narrative construction rather than material reality. The disappointment becomes more concrete if you consider the interaction between historical, material and ideal performance metrics. For progressives, the American socio-economic trajectory of the past three decades has been catastrophic. Current levels of material inequality, economic justice, social service provision etc. aren’t simply suboptimal; they’re horrifying. Progressives want their leaders to correct them, not just tinker around their edges. As these social pathologies get more extreme, the effort necessary to do that becomes more herculean, but that hasn’t (and shouldn’t have) led progressives to just lower their standards. In 2008, I had so much hope for Obama not because I thought he was exceptionally progressive, though that was part of it, but because I thought his election, in the midst of a serious crisis, would open up space for transformational politics that hadn’t been dreamed of in decades. In the face of a collapsing economy and two foreign wars, but with a landslide election and a veto-proof majority at his back, I believed Obama had an opportunity to do more than just implement a few good policies. I thought he had an opportunity to fundamentally alter the plane on which political battles were fought in this country, relegitimizing the idea of responsible regulation, attacking income inequality, expanding social services and forcefully confronting the utter lunacy that makes up so much of modern conservative politics.

Maybe that opportunity was illusory. Maybe Obama didn’t see it. Maybe he just didn’t seize it. But progressives who are disappointed in his leadership feel that way because they understand the magnitude of Obama’s task and are upset he hasn’t risen to it. Arguing that he’s accomplished more than Jimmy Carter is kind of beside the point.