Tuesday, October 26, 2010
“How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?”
From the woman, who gave us "Drill Baby Drill" as her coherent, convincing response to environmental policy, comes the title of my latest post. Perhaps this was her vague attempt at recreating the Ronald Reagan line, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" which was to be a defining moment in the 1980 Presidential debate with Jimmy Carter and can be seen here.
So with the mid-term elections of 2010, almost a week away, and certain to set the stage for the last 2 years of the Obama Presidency , the crucial question, is how will the likely beating at the polls affect Democrats and the Obama Presidency. I say likely, because even the most optimistic Democrat will tell you that the House is virtually lost and the Dems haven't been able to hammer through legislation with 59-60 senators, wonder what they can get done with 52-53. Worse still, this is not a credible alternative that is set to replace them but a ragbag coalition of conservative Republicans, backed by that great Tea Party of "patriots, anti-government people (who want to regulate abortion but don't want government to touch Medicare (a government programme) and general anti-establishment people (who receive large donations from undisclosed business interests and have the support of those great anti-establishment types like ermm. Newt Gingrich and the Republican house and senate leadership)
What's crucial though is how Obama handles this even more unwieldy Congress post-November. Presidential history is often littered with mid-term reversals, after a major election. Reagan in 1982 and Clinton in 1994 for example. Although one could argue that the Democrats were generally a tame and benign bunch during the Reagan presidency and bi-partisanship was the order of the day during those times. Further, Clinton, post-1994 did use his veto pen a record number of times and also was perhaps more of an instinctive centrist than Obama. Sadly, Obama faces the worst of both worlds. The partisan climate in the US has meant that basic jobs bills, or parts of the health care act (which was virtually identical to Mitt Romney's bill in MA) or even the repeal of don't ask don't tell, have all faltered. The new band of climate-change denying, social security privatising, anti -everything that Obama says Republicans ,are not likely to cuddle up to any centre-ground, bi-partisan initiatives. Worse still, possible senators such as Sharon Angle or Joe Miller are in no way qualified to hold office, by any sane standards.
On the flip side, while gridlock may ensue, this could give Obama a chance to provide decisive leadership. He has often been criticised for leaving too much to Congress and ramming little legislation through himself. A hostile Congress could now provide him with perfect foil to rebut those criticisms. George Bush seemed to have got a lot of initiatives passed with between 51 and 55 votes, its time Obama does the same. Further, there are possibly a few Republicans in Congress, who mindful of Newt Gingrich's discrediting government shutdown in the 1990s, are likely to want to reach across the aisle so as to avoid being painted as "nay sayers" and extremists. Once again, a chance for the President to get things done, and firmly anchor himself on the centre ground, a place he will need to be to draft a coherent narrative for 2012 and avoid being a one-term President.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Lessons from the Commonwealth Games
So the games are over and if some of the Indian government's propaganda is to believed, it was an "amazing success." Forgotten were the leaking toilets, the shambles of the athletes village and the lack of readiness in the venues and infrastructure which were eventually completed, barely in time. Worse still was the outburst from sections of the Indian media , government and bloggers that the criticism was all unfair. "West vs India" , "white people vs India", the "FT Vs India" they said. A bit like Don Quixote, fighting the windmills, these imaginary battles have not served India too well. The continual denial that plagues most projects in the country, be it infrastructure or IT services, have all been washed away by government propaganda about the "phenomenal" GDP growth. No matter that childhood malnutrition is at 42% or that eight Indian states have more poor people than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, money is constantly spent burnishing the countries image abroad. and billboards of "Incredible India" may be found in Times Square and on bus stops in Berlin, not sure who they are fooling. Interestingly, India's richest man Mukesh Ambani just built a fancy house (see picture) obviously heeding the calls for restraint in displays of public wealth, in a city where almost 50% of people live in slums, he should have an interesting view from the dining room. Not that his success is a bad thing, but the fact is the considerable private sector boom in India has done little to lift everyone or trickle down (as Wall Street journal dogma dictates).
So the lessons that emerge from the debacle, have been talked about after other similar debacles in the country. Most people will say "its all the politicians fault", business will blame the government, government will find scapegoats and a circle will be squared. But after lessons are supposedly learnt, and heads have rolled and souls have been searched, most people who have lived or been to India, will not be surprised if such a debacle repeats itself.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The end of the Iron Fist?
Britain is currently faces a fascinating battle for media plurality today which should have interesting ramifications for the media landscape in other parts of the world. The Stalin of the Media World, Rupert Murdoch is attempting an £8bn full takeover of the satellite broadcaster BSkyB which trades under the name Sky. This would in turn result in an integrated News Corp-Sky operation, which would include the Sun, the News of the World, the Times and book publisher HarperCollins. If British people thought the EU was undemocratic, then surely so is one man owning close to 40% of the country's print media? The Guardian has a pretty strident editorial Here
Murdoch and his empire are no benign dictators. His newspapers (which also include the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and a sizeable chunk of the Australian press) have pulled no punches in publicising his conservative political bias. In the span of a few months, the Wall Street Journal has gone from being a quality source of business and political news to becoming a tabloid like mouth-piece for the Republican party, replete with churlish editorials that essentially say : Barack Obama + any other vague pieces of progressive legislation = bad and free-market fundamentalism and climate change denial = good. As someone who suffers the ignominy of reading it every day, it epitomises the height of the "dumbing-down" that many titles have taken since they fell into Murdoch's hands. The Times in Britain is another case in point. A moderately conservative newspaper, with a pragmatic editorial line, overnight descended into a tabloid-lite mouthpiece for Murdoch in Britain. Worse still, Britain in particular, and its politicians seems so hamstrung by Murdoch that no political party has since the 1970s won an election without the backing of the Times and the Sun. I just as some of you know finished Tony Blair (Who calls himself a great friend of Murdoch's) autobiography and it describes the lengths at which the Labour Party in the 1990s bent over backwards to capture Murdoch's support, even apologising to them for their moderately pro-EU policies in government. Ed Milliband, already being given the childish "Red Ed" title by that great bastion of intelligence, the Sun, probably understands the challenge facing him in the next election, not just the Conservative party, but the Murdoch press.
In either case , what this battle against a Murdoch merger entails, is the future of media and journalism. For a country that prides itself on media freedom, Britain could do well to block this merger. Interestingly, two right of centre newspapers, the Daily Telegraph and the Mail, have joined the battle against the merger. Proving that Murdoch cannot merely characterize this battle as being one waged by the Left. Instead it is one clearly by the guardians of media freedom on one hand, and monopoly on the other, which will have interesting ramifications for the rest of the world.
Monday, October 11, 2010
My Return to the Blogosphere
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