Mr. Obama Goes to Seattle

[saavedra77]

A former coworker convinced me to go see Barack Obama's talk at Benaroya Hall, after work on Thursday. My friend had an extra ticket, seats were relatively cheap (particularly for this venue), and I was curious:

Obama struck me as a highly articulate, breezily confident, almost Clintonian speaker. I say "almost Clintonian" because if it had been Clinton speaking, I think I would have walked away with some resonant saying or slogan ringing in my ears (telling Bob Dole "That dog won't hunt no more", excoriating "the politics of personal destruction"), and I didn't come away with anything like that, really. "The audacity of hope" is a nice phrase (and a brave sentiment), but perhaps a bit too ... sententious? The man does have a certain undeniable charisma, though.

Nor was the junior senator from Illinois lacking in the advertised "audacity": His central theme was to stress--against the grain of our increasingly divisive politics--what Americans have in common: chiefly (in his view) what used to be called a "can-do" attitude, a mixture of against-the-odds optimism and clear-eyed pragmatism. He spoke about bringing people together, healing divisions. In which connection, he invoked his own experience of representing people as diverse as the residents of metro Chicago and rural southern Illinois.

The message was hardly subtle: unlikely as it might sound, this black man with an exotic-sounding name (he joked: "a black guy with a name like 'Barack Obama' ...") was suggesting that he can bridge the gap between red and blue America. And while he hasn't formally declared for 2008, the implication was clearly: as your president.

Obama's relative youth, poise, and urbanity did stir dim memories of the last sitting senator to take the White House. Obama moreover invited this comparison by suggesting JFK's plan to put a man on the moon by the end of the '60s as model for the kind of ambitious goal-setting the U.S. should apply to reforming our dysfunctional health care system and forging a national energy policy. These were some of Obama's biggest applause lines of the night--along with quips about the Bush Administration's ham-handed foreign policy.

Still, much of what I've read and experienced during the past few years makes me doubtful about the prospect of anyone bridging the gap between red and blue, anytime soon. Consequently, the prospect of a "President Obama" seems pretty damned remote, at the moment.

Maybe I'm just bitter and cynical, these days. Or maybe Americans' storied "can-do" attitude is overrated ...

Comments

[schmallturm.livejournal.com]

Did he have any actual policy suggestions to reform health care and forge a national energy policy?

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

On health insurance, Obama commented that the system is too paper-driven compared to other contemporary businesses, and suggested that it be steered toward a more efficient, cost-effective electronic methods.

He also spoke about somehow guaranteeing preventive care for children.

On energy policy, Obama suggested a much, much more aggressive, Manhattan-Project-like effort to reduce dependence on foreign oil through the development of alternative fuels.

He suggested that these were "surely" goals that Americans could broadly agree on ...

[schmallturm.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about health care (does anybody?). I do know something about energy...

I support a certain amount of research in energy, but definitely not something on the "manhattan project scale". IMHO that would just be welfare for engineers. An energy policy I'd support might include:

1) A higher gas tax, linked to a cut in the income tax. If you want less of something, tax it! The goal of this tax isn't to raise revenue, but to change behavior. There is already a federal gas tax, and this could also be done on the state level. This would also stimulate interest in alternative fuels by people looking to save money, rather than researchers looking to spend money.

2) Reduce use of coal, or find some way to make it less polluting. Nuclear is the obvious substitute. We could tighten down the SO2 market, or bring in a new carbon market if people want to reduce CO2 emission. The problem with coal is that it's politically very powerful. There might be ways to clean it up.

So there's a couple of ideas. See the manhattan project and the apollo program worked because they knew exactly what they had to build and basically how to build it, and just went all out going there. Saying "we're going to have a manhattan project to find a source of alternative energy" is meaningless, because at this point we don't know what that would look like.

So I don't agree with at least one of his goals, in fact I think it would be a downright bad idea and probably a huge waste of money. I don't think energy autarky is a desirable goal in the first place, which is a whole other subject...

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Interesting ideas: one hopes that Obama will develop some more specific alternative-energy ideas by the time that the 2008 primaries arrive.

I'm curious, though: What would you consider the downsides of energy autarky? Members of both parties like to talk about "weaning us off of foreign oil," etc. You may be the first person I've encountered who considers this undesireable in principle.