Predictions

Trying to be reasonable

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In a non-partisan setting, I had the following to say:

Without regard to my personal wishes with regard to Mr. Obama, my assessment of him as a politician, in 2008 an his chances in 2012 are as follows. Mr. Obama had a very good hand dealt to him in 2008. A very unpopular sitting president, a weak ticket from the same party, then a sharp downturn to the economy. Plus, his relative youth, his surface appeal to centrism, a vague but optimistic message, and of course the unique feature of being the first Black president. It added up to a solid win, but not a landslide win. (To see what a landslide looks like the three in my lifetime, 1964, 1972, 1984 are good examples.) Since then, he has had a very rough time. The economy is terrible. Whether you approve of his policies or disagree with them, so far they have not had any discernible positive effect. He seems unsteady in office, and to lack a capacity to command and lead, and the public wants a strong executive in times of crisis. The American public is an extremely unforgiving employer. We have had three people elected president who were popular and seemingly highly capable, whose reputations were destroyed by failing to overcome a weak economy: Martin van Buren, Grover Cleveland, and Herbert Hoover. Jimmy Carter is a less extreme example of the same phenomenon. Unless Mr. Obama suddenly has a run of good luck, he will be very weak going into the 2012 election, for the same reasons and will suffer the same fate. That said, the GOP may not be able to nominate a candidate that is popular and can reach into the center. Or the GOP could split off a third party, putting Mr. Obama back in that way. Mr. Obama’s supporters are highly motivated, organized and well-funded. Public employees unions will be practically fighting for their lives in 2012 and will work hard for him. The media will support him as fervently and with as much, if not more, slant and spin as they did in 2008. These advantages may make up for a terrible economy and weak performance in office.

Bottom line: It is too early to tell what will happen. The current Intrade odds show Mr. Obama a hair below even odds. Interestingly, Intrade shows a generic Democrat a hair above even, which suggests the possibility of a primary challenge to Mr. Obama. That could happen, probably from the Left. He will easily overcome any such challenge, and it may actually help him in the general election.

Interesting times for political junkies.

— Am I wrong about any of this?

Squealing From the Same Sheet of Music

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What a fascinating coincidence it is,  some days ago  it was Maxine Walters telling the Tea Party to go to hell,  last week   another member of the Congressional Black Caucus insisting that unspecified Tea Party members of Congress and/or the House are all ready to get out the white KKK robes and start hanging Negroes from trees. And now, the good Reverend Jesse Jackson, Jr.  (again – what church is he from, exactly?) chiming in. Umm – Slavery Amendment. Try as I can, I can’t bring to mind what the heck he meant by that, unless he is saying that because the Tea Partiers and the pre-Civil War South (and the segregationsists too) both favor states’ rights, then therefor they are exactly the same, practically.

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Quote of the Day: John Robb

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Global transition points like this are so rare, it’s a great time to be alive.

John Robb

Right on. Yes. Yes.

More of this type of thinking, please.

If I could live at any time in history it would be now.

(If you are not a regular reader of Mr. Robb’s Global Guerrillas, get that way.)

(Also check out Mr. Robb’s way cool new Wiki MiiU, which is all about resilience. I eagerly await his book on resilient communities.)

(Here is an xcellent John Robb talk about open source ventures, but full disclosure, a lot of it sailed over my head.)

(And if you have not read his book, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, go get it.)

Friends, please let me know in the comments, on a scale of 1 to 5, strongly disagree to strongly agree, how you respond to this quote. Put me down as a 5, obviously enough.

How soon until …

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… President Obama makes a public statement linking the Norway massacres and the Tea Party?

Does he go first? Or does he let others take the lead?

It is taking them a few days to figure out how to use the massacre politically.

But it is going to be a major theme for them going forward.

Count on it.

UPDATE: This is now circulating: “Koch-Funded Tea Party Heavyweight Tim Phillips Spoke at Norweigan Killer’s Political Party Event.” Classic.

Unhappy Medium: The Perils of Annoyance as Your Strategic Default

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Last week saw its share of sound and fury. One again, commentators from around the globe, ranging from noted Clausewitzian to unnoted COINdinista, gathered to answer, once and for all, one question: does America conquer through love or through  death?  (hint: the answer is yes).  However, last week saw something more important: substantive and troubling hints of the reemergence of a real threat, a specter that has haunted American defense thinking since 1844: unapologetic magic bulletry.

Quoth the Committee:

Iraq 2003 was the last hurrah of the dotcom era. Echoing a classic “netizen” conceit, Pentagon planners believed that American forces would interpret the Iraqi army as damage and route around them to victory. Intensive “network-centric” warfare would combine data from each network node (soldier) into a grand central clearinghouse that would deliver total information omniscience. Commanders could then move forces to needs, on demand. Any enemy infantryman that sneezed in the night would draw instant, exactly targeted fire that would hermetically package and deliver them to Allah with the best IT driven efficiency that the private sector could provide. Light shows of dizzying precision would capture enemy eyeballs, break their will to resist, and leave Mesopotamia the newest target demographic for Madison Avenue.
 
This thought was the logical endpoint of dotcom mania. Governmental institutions, the military being one such institution, lag behind the private sector in tech mania adoption. Dotcom groupthink hit the military hardest after it had passed its peak of hysteria in the rest of American society.

In its nineties heyday, techno-opiates promised a future where U.S. forces moved freely like network packets across an antiseptic information battlespace. These force “packets” would be effectively omniscient since enemy forces would continue to unheedingly  mass Soviet style forces in large formations across flat, treeless, and unpopulated terrain. There the enemy could be  anesthetized in detail with precision, with laser-guided fluffy down pillows lulling enemy soldiers gently to sleep.  The American military would simply interpret resistance “as damage and route around it“.  The result of such thinking was an American military that could deter a large country, destroy a medium-sized country, or occupy a small country.

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