I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
On television, commentators and African-American celebrants said that Barack Obama’s Inauguration means the inclusion of black people, maybe even the end of one arc in our nation’s story. If true, that’s a blessing for all Americans. The day’s comings and goings also opened a new chapter in our history, one that I see in human, not political, terms.
Watching the former president chopper away days after reciting his “good vs. evil” mantra, what came to mind was not Mr. Bush’s ideology but how little he grasps of the human condition or his own. Thus was national policy informed for eight years by a twisted father-son relationship, by the kid’s gut (not his cortex) and by a certainty born of religious faith too-soon-arrived-at.
Obama, forced by circumstance to forge himself, knows his psyche intimately, whence the cool confidence. So deep is this knowledge that he can see himself as if from the outside –- my definition of “intellectual.”
And he plays with doubt. Glory, hallelujah!
So the contrast between Presidents 43 and 44 as individuals is crystal clear. How President Obama’s comfort with complexity will translate into policy is foggy, as the Wall Street Journal noted in its Jan. 20 editorial, “The Opacity of Hope.”
His Inaugural speech squarely rejected Bushism, true, but he’s appointed centrists to big jobs. And the President has embarked on a serious campaign to repair divisions, heal fissures and reduce partisanship. Is that possible? Is it desirable? Will he reconcile opposites or lose direction in search of consensus? I remain skeptical.
Meanwhile, the life of the nation rides on his decisions, as the WSJ editorial underscores.
The Journal advises President Obama to ignore the Bush record on terrorism except to “validate the Bush programs that have kept us safe.”
No, because the Bush Administration didn’t keep us safe — that’s the Big Lie of our times. It failed to prevent 9/11. And, as Donald Rumsfeld once pondered, its responses may have created more terrorists than it killed. Restoring Constitutional government should enhance security.
And no, again, because the U.S. must stop teetering on the precipice of authoritarian government. Gerald Ford’s well-intentioned pardon of Richard Nixon for crimes against the Constitution probably encouraged Ronald Reagan’s, which led, in turn, to George W. Bush’s offensive against our fundamental document.
Therefore, Obama, the Constitutional scholar, should foster an independent investigation of the Bush era. Where there’s crime, we, the people, must prosecute.
The WSJ also advises President Obama on the economy, posing simplistic solutions -– Bush’s good vs. evil lives! — and strategies that have already failed on the grounds that they succeeded!
I would adopt a New Deal-inspired agenda, but President Obama won’t, if only because he’s younger. Tired of “stale political arguments,” he will seek new roads -– not mine and not those crayoned in by unhinged WSJ editorialists.
My skepticism persists but so does great hope, for President Obama’s politics matter less than his internal freedom. He can bring his talents to bear on the awful challenges bequeathed him by a small, sad predecessor because it’s not about him.
Because he knows himself.
