Parts to Wholes: the Socionomic Systems Nexus

 The 100 Days and Outlook

AP Poll: After Obama's 100 days, US on right track Millions of people jobless. Billions of dollars in bailouts. Trillions of dollars in U.S. debt. And yet, for the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is on the right track. In a sign that Barack Obama has inspired hopes for a brighter future in the first 100 days of his presidency, an Associated Press-GfK poll shows that 48 percent of Americans believe the United States is headed in the right direction — compared with 44 percent who disagree. The "right direction" number is up 8 points since February and a remarkable 31 points since October, the month before Obama's election. Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to the AP-GfK poll. It shows, as Obama approaches his 100th day in office next Wednesday, most people consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington. "He presents a very positive outlook," said Cheryl Wetherington, 35, an independent voter who runs a chocolate shop in Gardner, Kan. "He's very well-spoken and very vocal about what direction should be taken." Nobody knows how long the honeymoon will last, but Obama has clearly transformed the yes-we-can spirit of his candidacy into a tool of governance. His ability to inspire confidence — Obama's second book is titled "The Audacity of Hope" — has thus far buffered the president against the harsh realities of two wars, a global economic meltdown and countless domestic challenges. Even if they don't always like what he's doing, Americans seem content for now that the president is taking action to correct the nation's course. He's doing something, anything, and that's better than nothing. Other AP-GfK findings could signal trouble for Obama: _While there is evidence that people feel more optimistic about the economy, 65 percent said it's difficult for them and their families to get ahead. More than one-third know of a family member who recently lost a job. _More than 90 percent of Americans consider the economy an important issue, the highest ever in AP polling. _Nearly 80 percent believe that the rising federal debt will hurt future generations, and Obama is getting mixed reviews at best for his handling of the issue.And yet, this is the first time since January 2004 than an AP survey found more "right direction" than "wrong direction" respondents. That fleeting 2004 burst of optimism came shortly after the capture of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In recent years, the U.S. public has tended to be more pessimistic than optimistic about the nation's future. The exceptions lasted just a few months: the start of the Iraq war, the Sept. 11 attacks and late in the Clinton administration. Obama is not the first president who has sought to shape the nation's psychology, tapping the deep well of American optimism to effect policy and politics. For some people, including a minority of Republicans, the message has struck a chord. Others say their newfound optimism has nothing to do with Obama, but rather with an era of personal responsibility they believe has come with the economic meltdown.

• Shields, Brooks Mull Torture Memos, Obama's Leadership Columnists Mark Shields and David Brooks discuss the Obama administration's decision to release Bush-era memos on interrogation tactics and the shape of the president's first 100 days in office.
• What have we learned about Obama in 100 days? (NBC)
• Take Two: Goodwin, Meacham on history, political leadership (Meet the Press)
• Obama's First 100 Days (CBS/FTN)
• Obama’s first 100 days (FT Graphic)

Obama's Overture  As we approach the 100-day mark for the Obama administration, you will hear and see a wide variety of grades for the new president's performance. Remember this: What has happened so far is no more than the overture to the first act of this opera. The big stuff is still to come. The soprano has not opened her mouth for her signature aria. That will be health-care reform. The devilish baritone is still offstage. Wait for the first international crisis. Barack Obama has launched a lot of initiatives but has fulfilled few of them. What he has shown -- and it is an important accomplishment in itself -- is a mastery of the art of managing the presidency. It is important because it is the first and most basic test of his ultimate ability to be a successful president. And it is surprising, because there was no reason to assume that he had the skills to direct such a large enterprise. Never before in Obama's 47 years had the lawyer-writer-politician had to recruit, assign and motivate a professional staff of this size and skill and organize it to meet his needs and carry out his purposes. His staffs in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. Senate were minuscule. The campaign itself was by far his largest organizational challenge, and he passed with flying colors. But the presidency poses far tougher tests than a need to amass 270 electoral votes. Obama had a few stumbles in assembling his Cabinet and, as a result, lost the services of one potential major asset, Tom Daschle, his original choice to manage his health-care initiative. Many of the Cabinet members are still learning their jobs, but the White House staff has supported what so far has been a bravura performance on Obama's part. Particularly striking has been the staff's ability to move at a rapid pace to tackle inherited challenges and launch ambitious efforts without creating a sense of confusion about the priorities of the president. Hardly a day has gone by in the first three months that Americans have not seen Obama on their TV screens in a variety of roles -- chiefly as economic salvage director for seriously shattered housing, credit and employment systems. But they've also seen him as commander in chief of armed forces fighting two wars, diplomatic traveler engaged with world leaders, and agenda-setter for Congress -- to say nothing of first father, first fan, first consort of Michelle and first master of Bo. Making this kaleidoscope look coherent -- and not confusing -- requires enormous discipline, and nowhere more than in the management of the White House schedule. The task and the tools were sketched for me last week by chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who had a close-up look at the near-fatal costs of losing control as a White House staff member in the chaotic first two years of the Clinton administration.

Sizing Up Obama's First 100 Days The combination of candor and vision and the patient explanation of complex issues was Obama at his best — and more than any other moment of his first 100 days in office, it summed up the purpose of his presidency: a radical change of course not just from his predecessor, not just from the 30-year Reagan era but also from the quick-fix, sugar-rush, attention-deficit society of the postmodern age. The speech received ho-hum coverage on the evening news and in print — because, I suspect, it was more of a summation than the announcement of new initiatives. Quickly, public attention turned to new "tempests of the moment" — an obscene amount of attention was paid to the new Obama family dog and then, more appropriately, to the Bush Administration's torture policy and the probably futile attempt to prosecute those who authorized the practices. The most important thing we now know about Barack Obama, after nearly 100 days in office, is that he means to confront that way of life directly and profoundly, to exchange sand for rock if he can. Whether you agree with him or not — whether you think he is too ambitious or just plain wrong — his is as serious and challenging a presidency as we have had in quite some time. There are those who mistake his quiet, deliberative style for softness. There is the fear that he won't have the strength to stand up to the Israelis (or the Iranians) or to the left wing of his party on health care or to the porkers on the defense budget. On the other hand, there are three dead Somali pirates who attest to this President's ability to make tough decisions in a timely fashion. Obama won't stand up to everyone, always; he is, after all, a politician. But the quality of fights he does choose will determine whether he builds his legacy on rock or sand. He has had a brilliant time announcing his intentions, but the real game of governing is about to begin. 

Ironies of 'a Devout Non-Ideologue'  How many ironies can a single presidency engender? Barack Obama is a detached man who has inspired fierce loyalties, and a cool man who has aroused both warm feelings of affection and a fiery opposition. He loves to engage conservatives, yet few of them have chosen to engage him. He is seen as too moderate by parts of the left, but the right thinks he has a radical, statist agenda. Wall Street's critics believe Obama's approach to rescuing the financial system amounts to coddling the bankers and financial scammers who got us into this mess. But many on the Street say Obama doesn't understand them and fear he is a secret populist who would displace finance as the dominant force in the U.S. economy. On torture, Obama sought a middle ground: He ended the practice, disclosed what happened and proposed that we move on. Yet the right opposed disclosure, parts of the left wanted more accountability and their fight brought forth all of the bitterness Obama wants to put behind us. The man does more than defy labels. He hates them. At a briefing for columnists last week to influence the coming 100-day assessments, a senior Obama adviser, struggling to offer a philosophical definition of the 44th president, finally settled on calling him "a devout non-ideologue." But the mysteries and paradoxes of these 100 days cannot be unraveled without an understanding that the president is more than a "whatever works" guy. Obama would not inspire such loyalty if his supporters did not see (correctly) that he has an agenda to move the country to a very different place. He would not inspire such resistance if his opponents did not sense exactly the same thing.

Politics: Inside the Sausage Factory

Let's Get Ready To Reconcile!  Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Sounds fun, except that this column is about reconciliation, obfuscation and cap-and-trade. A pity, I know, but bear with me. If we want to "put away childish things," as President Obama urged in his Inaugural Address (quoting Saint Paul), we're going to have to talk about some awfully wonky procedural and substantive things that grown-ups in Washington like to obsess about. And we're going to have to get used to the idea that transformational change in health, education and energy policy is more important than whether Republicans cry foul over being railroaded. Reconciliation on Capitol Hill, as you have probably heard, has nothing to do with avoiding divorce. It's the process by which the House and Senate "reconcile" their differing versions of the federal budget and deal with the devilish details. To keep things moving, passing budgets requires only 51 votes in the Senate, a simple majority. Now it may strike you that majority rule is what democracy is supposed to be about, but that just means you haven't been paying attention. A half century ago, the Senate averaged only one filibuster every two years. Senators would speak for 20 or 30 hours straight (or even read the phone book aloud) in order not to yield the floor until the bill—often a civil-rights measure—was killed. It took a vote of two thirds of the Senate to end debate and proceed to passage, a move known as cloture. Today's filibusters no longer feature the "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" theatrics and cloture now requires three fifths. But what was once rare has become routine. For the last several years, senators in the minority have somehow convinced themselves that democracy demands that nothing serious passes their chamber without 60 votes. Because the Democrats have only 58 (59 when Al Franken shows up) and might face some Democratic defectors, they're examining their options. Republicans are shocked (shocked!) at the idea that a tool they used when they were in control to pass huge tax cuts for the rich in 2001 and 2003 might now be used for Obama's agenda. Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, only recently Obama's Commerce secretary designee, now says that using reconciliation is "an act of violence" and that the majority is "running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River." In a strong bid for the hypocrisy gold, Gregg favored using reconciliation not just for President Bush's tax cuts but for Bush's plans to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as well. Now he favors using reconciliation for obfuscation—to convince the public that the Democrats are somehow corrupting the process. I hate to break it to Republicans, but this isn't going to work any better than anything else they've been trying lately. Sure, the Democrats are hypocrites now, too. They blasted Bush's use of reconciliation when the GOP controlled Congress. But the supposed damage to "comity" (a fancy word for politicians getting along) is exaggerated, especially considering that not a single Republican in either chamber voted for Obama's budget. Not one. If the GOP is so mad about improper use of reconciliation that it deploys what Washington calls the "nuclear option," and shuts down the Senate with procedural gambits, only the C-Span part of its base will rally to the cause. Rahm Emanuel scoffs at the notion that the public is going to tune in to an archaic debate. "Hell,"—except he didn't say "hell"—"half the press corps doesn't understand what reconciliation is." Obama and the Democrats would prefer not to have to use reconciliation; it rubs wounds raw and makes it harder for the president to maintain a Reaganesque pose above the fray. But they'll do what it takes. When Congress reconvenes next week, the House and Senate Democratic leadership will include in their conference report on the budget resolution instructions that reconciliation can be used as a kind of fallback mechanism if the Senate isn't on track to pass a health-care bill and an education bill with 60 votes by this fall.

Obama's Bipartisan Triumphs Just about everyone agrees that one of the sad casualties of President Obama’s first 100 days is the bipartisanship he championed so appealingly on the campaign trail. But everyone is wrong—at least when it comes to the ideas Obama is advancing. Yes, it’s true that Republicans haven’t been supporting his initiatives, but that’s hardly Obama’s fault. Any fair-minded assessment of the president’s policy priorities reveals them to be to be an innovative blend of liberal and conservative thinking. As a result, Obama’s early tenure has posed nothing so much as an instructive political riddle, which runs as follows. When can you have a bipartisan agenda without Republican votes? Answer: when Republicans find that endorsing their own ideas gets in the way of pursuing their thirst for power. Don’t believe me? Look at what Obama is actually trying to do in his three big reform arenas: health care, energy, and education. Health care. The centerpiece of Obama’s approach to overhauling health care, now being fleshed out by Congress, is to create a new insurance exchange or marketplace so that people who don’t receive employer-sponsored plans have access to group coverage outside the job setting. In the exchange, folks would choose among competing health plans, with lower earners enjoying subsidies that taper off as income rises. Energy. Complicated details aside, Obama’s overarching approach to energy is simple: He wants America finally to put a proper, higher price on dirty energy that reflects its true environmental costs, and thus create market incentives that allow clean alternative energies to flourish. Obama’s related plan is to cushion the impact of higher dirty energy prices on middle- and lower-income Americans by rebating to them 80 percent of the revenue collected by his cap and trade plan. It’s basically a tax swap, with the other 20 percent of the revenue used by Uncle Sam to jumpstart investment in new energy sources. Education. In Republicans' eyes, Obama sinned by not fighting to renew the Washington, D.C., voucher program that provided a lifeline to a few thousand desperate families. But the rest of his school agenda hits every Republican erogenous zone. The president is pushing charter schools, higher standards, differential teacher pay, alternative teacher certification, and even tenure reform in ways far beyond anything any president has attempted before. What’s more, with Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s savvy management of the administration’s union ties, Obama has a chance to make more Nixon-to-China progress on ideas conservatives have long urged than has ever been possible. But when a Democratic president elected by a wide margin is working overtime to foist on America the Romney health plan, the McCain environmental fix, and the conservative establishment’s dream agenda for the schools, the question of “who lost bipartisanship” in his first 100 days has a pretty clear answer. 

Responses and Backlashes

In GOP base, a 'rebellion brewing' A quick tour through the week’s headlines suggests the Republican Party is beginning to come to terms with the last election and that consensus is emerging among GOP elites that the party needs to move away from discordant social issues. There was Sen. John McCain's daughter and his campaign manager who last week demanded that their fellow Republicans embrace same-sex marriage. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman – the most devoted modernizer among the party's 2012 hopefuls – won approving words from New York Times columnist Frank Rich for his call to downplay divisive values issues. The party’s top elected leaders in Congress, meanwhile, spooked by being attacked as the “party of no,” were recasting themselves as a constructive, respectful opposition to a popular president. But outside Washington, the reality is very different. Rank-and-file Republicans remain, by all indications, staunchly conservative, and they appear to have no desire to moderate their views. GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party’s own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction. There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies – as always – through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense. "There is a sense of rebellion brewing," said Katon Dawson, the outgoing South Carolina Republican Party chairman, who cited unexpectedly high attendance at anti-tax “tea parties” last week. In one sense, Republican leaders face the same challenge their Democratic counterparts did during the Bush years: how to effectively channel the deep emotion of the base while tamping down its excesses. But the party’s battered infrastructure, still recovering from its drubbings in 2006 and 2008, is also listing to the right. Liberal Republican groups like the Main Street Republican Partnership and the Republican Majority for Choice remain essentially irrelevant, and even the main gay GOP group, the Log Cabin Republicans, is fending off a challenge from a more conservative gay splinter faction. The grass-roots fervor is pushing the party to the right in another concrete way: Two of the most prominent GOP Senate moderates face serious primary challenges in 2010. In Pennsylvania, former Congressman Pat Toomey, a down-the-line economic and social conservative, is running against Sen. Arlen Specter, attacking his “liberal agenda on social, labor, immigration and national security policies.”

• Specter to switch to Democratic Party
• Moderates blame conservatives
• Boehner slams Obama
  

Specter's Move Signals a Decisive Shift  In announcing his switch to the Democratic Party on Tuesday, the maverick Pennsylvanian was doing more than trying to save a political career jeopardized by the increasing conservatism of the Republican Party. He was also ratifying a decisive shift in American politics. The GOP in his home state had once been a bastion of moderates and liberals including William Scranton, Hugh Scott and Richard Schweiker. In the age of Barack Obama, Republicans of that stripe are flooding into the Democratic Party. Specter is not a leading indicator. His conversion is the culmination of an inexorable trend. In a sense, Specter's departure is a victory for conservatives who, since the days of Barry Goldwater, have been intent on purging liberals from the GOP. The raw political fact is that Specter was in grave danger of losing a Republican primary to former Rep. Pat Toomey, an anti-tax activist. One Democratic strategist reported seeing polling that showed Specter less popular among Pennsylvania Republicans than President Obama. Conservatives had once hoped that creating an ideologically pure party would put them on the path to a majority. But they must now worry that the Republicans' continued rightward drift is putting the party at odds with a moderate to liberal mood that pervades the country almost everywhere outside the Deep South. And Specter's switch would give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, assuming that Minnesota's Al Franken eventually takes the seat for which he now leads after an extended recount. At the instant of his conversion, Specter transformed himself from a political underdog into a favorite for re-election in 2010.

• We Didn't Have to Lose Specter
• With the GOP Obsolete, Pressure is on Democrats
• The Republican Party Needs Moderates 

The Culture War of Words Advice to would-be culture warriors in the 21st century: walk softly and carry a big thesaurus. According to the conventional wisdom, the culture wars are over in Washington—or, at the very least, reduced to sideline skirmishes. Buoyed by the support of centrist, socially conservative Christians, the Obama administration has ushered in a new era of conciliation. Ideological opponents—especially those on either side of the abortion issue—are now trying to establish common ground. This is one of the priorities of the president's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. (I wrote a story about this a month ago.) A first order of business is "abortion reduction," a seemingly noncontroversial and laudable goal. By agreeing that abortion is a complex moral issue and that it should be less frequent, former enemies can work together to find ways to reduce abortions. Beneath all the optimism though, tensions continue to simmer, and it can seem that differences between the old culture wars and the new ones are merely differences in tone and tactics, not in ideology. In previous eras, warriors fought with rhetorical bludgeons; now they use newfangled semantic weapons so sharp they could split a hair. On both sides, people say they want abortion reduction. But listen carefully to how they say it. Outside the Beltway, who really cares? According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll from August 2008, 54 percent of Americans support legal abortion in all or most cases—exactly the same percentage as a decade ago. It's hard to imagine anyone arguing with the basic premise: in an ideal world, fewer American women would seek abortions. How our government achieves that end matters a great deal; how activists talk about achieving it—in terms of need or numbers—matters not at all. In the words of David Kuo, a veteran of George W. Bush's faith-based office: "This stuff doesn't permeate the heartland—nobody gives a s––t."

Values, Responses and Adaptations

Generation Me Perhaps, one day, we will say that the recession saved us from a parenting ethos that churns out ego-addled spoiled brats. And though it is too soon to tell if our economic free fall will cure America of its sense of economic privilege, it has made it much harder to get the money together to give our kids six-figure sweet-16 parties and plastic surgery for graduation presents, all in the name of "self esteem." And that's a good thing, because as Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell point out in their excellent book "The Narcissism Epidemic," released last week, we've built up the confidence of our kids, but in that process, we've created a generation of hot-house flowers puffed with a disproportionate sense of self-worth (the definition of narcissism) and without the resiliency skills they need when Mommy and Daddy can't fix something. But as Twenge goes on to illustrate, all that narcissism is a problem that can range from the discourteous—residential advisers at Southern lament students disregarding curfews, playing dance music until 3 a.m., demanding new room assignments at a moment's notice and failing to understand why professors won't let them make up an exam they were too hung over to take—to the disastrous—failed marriages, abusive working environments and billion-dollar Ponzi schemes. Seems that the flip side of all that confidence isn't prodigious success but antisocial behavior. Armed with a steady influx of trophies just for showing up, "I Am Special" coloring books and princess parties, it is hard for kids to understand why an abundance of ego might be bad for them. Hot off their own rebellions in the late '60s, my parents struggled to give me the freedom to be me while also teaching me generosity, compassion and humility. But no matter how you were raised, the handiest cure for narcissism used to be life. Whether through fate, circumstances or moral imperative, our culture kept hubris in check. Now, we encourage it. Treating the whole world as if it works for you doesn't suggest you're special, it means you're an ass. As an antidote to a skyrocketing self-worth, Twenge recommends humility, evaluating yourself more accurately, mindfulness and putting others first. Such values may seem quaint, maybe even self-defeating, to those of us who think we're special, but trust me: it gets easier with practice.

In Slumping Economy, a Shift in Shopping Habits PACO UNDERHILL, author, "Why We Buy": We cannot sustain the juggernaut of consumption that we have had here in the United States over the past decade. PAUL SOLMAN: But you want us to be spending as much, don't you? PACO UNDERHILL: I want you to be spending what you can afford. We have Americans out there whose credit card debt exceeds their annual income. We have an entire generation of Americans with little or no fiscal discipline or financial knowledge. Our houses are too big. Our cars are too big. Our debts are too big. Our bellies are too big. Now it's time to go on a diet. PAUL SOLMAN: Do you think that because many of us can't afford to shop as much now, we feel more isolated? PACO UNDERHILL: I think so, yes. And many Americans are deeply frightened. They are frightened because they are facing things that most of them have never thought of in the context of their lifetime. We also know that there is something in our culture called shopping sickness. One of the fundamental issues I think we're trying to discover as consumers is that there are no acquisitions that are transformational. Acquiring that iPod or that tube of lipstick or that Maserati doesn't change us into anyone other than what we were to start out with and that, therefore, our relationship to consumption here has to be more real. 

Yanks in Crisis We’re in the middle of the biggest crisis of capitalism in 70 years. We’ve got a new administration in Washington active on every front. What’s all this done to the public mind? A poll to be released today by The National Journal and Allstate gives a pretty good view. As you’d expect, there’s a lot of economic anxiety in the country, spanning every income category. Sixty-four percent of Americans believe there are more risks that endanger their standards of living today than in their parents’ time. On the other hand, there’s still some sense of opportunity. Forty-two percent believe there are more opportunities to move up than a generation ago, compared with 29 percent who think there are fewer. In short, there’s a feeling of greater volatility, both up and down. People don’t seem to feel as if they are sliding into a hole, but neither do they feel secure. So whom do they turn to in times like these? Themselves. Americans have always felt that they are masters of their own fate. Decade after decade, Americans stand out from others in their belief that their own individual actions determine how they fare. That conviction has been utterly unshaken by the global crisis. In question after question, large majorities say their own actions will determine how much they will make, how well they will endure the recession, how healthy they will be and so on. The crisis has not sent Americans running to government for relief. Nor has it led to a populist surge in anti-business sentiment. My friend Ron Brownstein of The National Journal looks at the data and concludes that while Americans are still skeptical of government, they are open to rethinking what the social safety net should look like in the 21st century. I look at the data and conclude that the tumult has not significantly changed the way Americans look at government, corporations or the social contract. Americans are open to good ideas from government, as always, but they are still skeptical and fiercely self-sufficient. The economic crisis has produced a desire for change but not a philosophical shift. The big lesson for the Obama administration is that the American people will continue to support its agenda as long as they think it is competent. It was not automatic that an administration led by a 47-year-old man with little Washington experience would run a professional, smoothly functioning operation. Yet he has. The administration has unveiled a dazzling array of proposals with a high degree of efficiency and managerial skill. This has inspired confidence in his team, if not in the government as a whole.