ILF POST

By Mary Catherine Bateson The news that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace prize was greeted by a chorus of “too soon” in the United States. This early in his administration, he is still seen as a figure of hope rather than a figure of achievement. Even his strongest backers are waiting to see his campaign commitment in his presidency, and those who oppose what he stands for suspect that the committee in Norway is using the prize in an effort to influence U.S. politics.

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By Linc Bloomfield Regardless of the decision on increasing troop strength in Afghanistan, there is reason to believe that the US may be approaching a new isolationist period that will shun new military interventions except for direct attack like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. This prediction is based not only on shrinking public support for the troubled US-led Afghan war, but also on the American political culture as revealed in modern history.

Afghanistan is following the pattern that led to past periods of withdrawal. Goals have morphed from Bush’s “prosperous and peaceful democratic Afghanistan” to Obama’s focus on the specific threats from Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan. The goal assumes an effective national government where none has existed, in a country run by tribal leaders that supplies most of the heroin that lands on world streets. Scattered signs of progress haven’t erased 8 years of failure to crush the Taliban or catch Osama bin Laden, And never forget Afghan expulsion of occupiers from Alexander the Great to Britain and Russia, both Tsarist and Communist.

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By Linc Bloomfield Despite visits to Tehran before the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution, where none of my contacts appeared to have any sense of the impending politico-socio-religious earthquake, my view of Iran remains that of Plato’s cave-dwelling shadow-watchers. They were dependent for a glimpse of reality on the flickering shadows of outsiders caught by the campfire’s light. I am not alone in this. A few years ago the State Department held a workshop on Iran, with not only prominent US Iranian experts, but unprecedentedly several Iranians authorized by the regime to take part. I’m not sure why I was there, but after mostly listening for a day, the only honest comment I could make was that it was an exercise in competitive ignorance.
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By Ralph Keyes Several years ago we had to decide what kind of piano to buy for our children. Electronic keyboards were attractive because of their size, economy and versatility. But most reviews I read compared them to “real pianos.” (”Sounds almost like a real piano.”) This raised the question: if you’re looking for a product being judged by its resemblance to another product, why not buy the one that sets the standard? That’s what we did. We bought, and still have, a sturdy Hamilton upright piano.

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By Mary Catherine BatesonPresident Obama’s comments on abortion and his record in Illinois suggest a likely course on the death penalty: reduction and better regulation rather than abolition. This seems to be his style – reasoned and moderate reform. When it was found that there had been a number of mistaken convictions in Illinois, he pushed through a bill providing for the videotaping of interrogations leading to confessions in capital crimes, and he is clearly aware that convictions and penalties of all kinds weigh more severely on minorities. However, even though he acknowledges that it does not deter crime, he apparently approves the death penalty for particularly heinous cases, because of the strong feelings involved.

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By Linc Bloomfield The crowded conference room fell silent as the first panelist was introduced. It was the beginning of a daylong program of seminars followed by a reception and gala dinner, and if Central Casting had been asked to send over someone who epitomized a senior statesman, this was the man for them — tall, handsome, silver hair, in short the picture of mature gravitas. One of my daughters confessed later that until he spoke she expected this elegant older gent to sound stuffy, egotistical, and highly implausible as a partner for the sometimes lighthearted colleague and friend he was in Cambridge to honor.

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By Mary Catherine Bateson. Following last year’s elections, debates about same-sex marriage continue in a number of states that have legislation pending. The possibility of gay marriage has the potential to strengthen, rather than weakening, the social fabric. Marriage involves both rights and responsibilities and it may be that the demands by the gay community for the right to marry will lead to a new consideration of the responsibilities involved for couples of all kinds.

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By Linc Bloomfield. Barack Obama has been President of the United States for a little over two months, and it’s much too early to issue a definitive report card. But that hasn’t stopped the cable and radio commentariat from awarding him instant grades of D or even Fail. Typical was the presidential news conference on March 17. It was immediately followed by the thumbs-down judgments of an otherwise reasonable CNN panel (”the best panel in the world” according to CNN) declaring that his performance was a disaster, he looked tired, he had bags under his eyes, he lost the thread, he was incoherent etc. etc.

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By Gloria Feldt As Congress works through the economic stimulus package, representatives need to keep in mind the connection between a woman’s need to determine her reproductive life and her ability to benefit from and contribute to economic recovery and growth. (This is an exclusive commentary I wrote for the Women’s Media Center.)

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By Linc Bloomfield Poor number 44. Each day brings a new crisis at home or abroad that could foul up his big plans for Day One. A sardonic joke captures the Obama problem: a man was hauled before a judge for setting his bed on fire. His defense was that the bed was already on fire when he got into it.

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By Linc Bloomfield The lame-duck Bush administration has been urging NATO members to admit Georgia and Ukraine to NATO in a hurry without the normal requirements for membership. If this happens, it will poison US-Russian relations which President-elect Obama must restore if he is not to spend his term fighting another cold war. There is little or no chance to get those ties into better balance if this policy is allowed to continue, let alone speed up.

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By Mary Catherine Bateson. It strikes me that it is time to look at the way candidates for the presidency are sometimes damaged by the process, at least temporarily and perhaps permanently. Yes, we are all no doubt flawed and it is wise to maintain that awareness and remain alert, to conserve a hint of cynicism. But it seems unfortunate that in filling this position, which is so important not only for the US but for the rest of the world (which does not get to vote), the process so often erodes the principles. It reminds me of something that often struck me about the academic tenure process — the number of people who, having entered a field because they loved it and loved research, ended up alienated from both.

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By Jane Alexander “A great nation deserves great art”. This is the slogan and the dream of the National Endowment for the Arts. The cultural fire of the ’90s which sought, under the house leadership of Newt Gingrich, to extinguish the NEA, is now mostly ash and the budget has crept quietly up to over 144 million dollars. We still have a long way to go and with all the pressing financial needs of this country it is doubtful if the budget will move soon to the 174 millions it was in 1993 when I became NEA Chairman. Still there is much that can be done from a bully pulpit to promote the arts in America and especially arts education in our schools. Why should we care about the arts when there are so many other issues of dire importance in today’s world? The arts platform for the Obama campaign answers the question:

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By Mary Catherine Bateson. Once again, current events, this time the financial crisis, are pressing voters into short term decisions, but it is important to address the current crisis with a positive vision of how the system should work in the long term, and a memory of the steps that led up to it over a decade or more. The history is the history of systematic deregulation and disbelief in the positive contribution of government, accompanied by a national disenchantment with the political process and dropping voter engagement. Now everyone is aware that this election will be critical, but the urgency is not temporary. Every election poses the issues of change. Every election challenges us to consider what it is that we hope for.

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By Linc Bloomfield The economy may be in the tank, but the rest of life goes on, including the presidential campaign and the other towering problems that will face the new president at 12:01 PM next January 20. Let’s try to forget the Dow for a moment and look at some of those problems, both of our own making and the work of forces outside US control.

Despite a thin national wallet, it’s possible to imagine at least some forty five degree turns in domestic policy under a new president, involving such weighty (and controversial) issues as taxes, health care, energy policy, and regulation of the financial markets. More dollars can always be printed and more Treasury bonds sold to the Chinese, allowing at least some wiggle room for the victors and their followers. In foreign policy and national security it’s hard to imagine costly new initiatives and crusades, or support for same by an exhausted and disillusioned nation. A little historical perspective may help.

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By Linc Bloomfield Many Americans worried about the decline of US influence have adopted “multilateral” as a foreign policy mantra. Both Senators Obama and McCain have promised to collaborate more with other countries, and President Bush, in one of his extraordinary deathbed conversions, told a news conference that “one of the things I will leave behind is a multilateralism to deal with tyrants, so problems can be solved diplomatically” It’s not always clear what ” multilateralism” people have in mind. But many are obviously thinking of the way the US went to war in Iraq — pretty much alone, with insults to allies for not falling in line, and backing from only four members of the UN Security Council. After military victory morphed into catastrophic nation-building, the US crawled back to the Council to gain legitimacy and support. Indeed, Mr. Bush now pays routine tribute to the “international community”, although not as energetically as Secretary Rice, who in 2000 dismissed it as a “phantom”, but now scarcely utters a sentence without invoking it.

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By Gloria Feldt How many male politicians do you think are burning their little black books and expunging e-mails today, as another of their brotherhood bites the dust from his own lack of zipper control? We have way too much information about John Edwards and his self-described narcissism. Clearly, like any good lawyer, John Edwards can look us straight in the eye and lie like a rug, as he did initially about his affair with Rielle Hunter.

But then sex, lies, and politics go together like peanut butter, jelly, and bread in America. And sex scandals are the one aspect of government that consistently works across geography and party lines. After all John McCain has admitted to affairs himself. There’s no partisanship in bed, except for short-lived tactics where the sway of sex can be used to bring one’s opponent down

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By Lynda Waugh – Guest Contributor Success and failure have taken on new meanings. In the past, we understood experiences of failure as leading to success. They became synonymous. The struggles toward attainment were the lessons. Life’s scenarios had beginnings, middles, and an end. There was genuine ambition for a better life, one of quality and equality. One’s endurance, resistance, and tolerance designed the intention. The individual matured, confronting wants and needs. Coping strategies were cultivated with sincere goals. The connotation of success today, seems to be linked with tangibles and position, the end result. The importance of the process of working through challenge is disappearing. With this evaporation, goes character building, qualities such as tenacity, honesty, patience, connection. There is an ignorance, even shunning, toward process and performance. The emphasis is an attitude of entitlement and corruption.

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By Linc Bloomfield Now that Israel’s 60^th anniversary celebration is over, it’s worth recalling how extraordinarily deep the divisions ran on this matter within the US policymaking community.

On May 14, 1948 there was broad American sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust, along with guilt at rejecting Jewish asylum-seekers. The years since have featured admiration for a new democracy in a tough neighborhood, strategic interest in a sophisticated and reliable ally, a multiplier effect from the evangelical Christian community that supports Israel as a step toward their apocalyptic vision, and finally the nineteen Arab Islamists who transformed America on 9/11. The combination has kept Israel a vital interest through ten US administrations.

But it was not always so.

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By Gloria Feldt For those exhausted with Clinton-Obama debates I thought I’d comment on the recent Cindy McCain “farfallegate” recipe scandal–you can scroll down to the end to see the evidence:

Cindy McCain was probably clueless that an intern on her pugnacious war hero husband’s campaign staff had rifled through recipes published on the Food Channel’s website and presented several as Cindy’s own on Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign website.

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By Linc Bloomfield The first mention of the Iraq War may be on page 10 of my newspaper today, but President Bush’s successor will still confront the monumental predicament Bush is leaving behind. In an era of official cheerleading and media sound bites it’s not easy to get a sense of the realities, But from the information available it’s still worth trying to define the strategic situation as it appears today.

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By Charles Lindblom A recent morning paper told me that Exxon Mobil gave $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to various groups to mislead the public about global warning. It gives one to think.

Many of us believe, or simply assume, that the major purpose of communication is to inform. Each of us depends on information communicated to us through the media, as well as through word-of-mouth. And many social scientists who study media and other communication closely associate communication with information in, for example, assuming that those who receive the most communication–those who read widely and tune in on radio and tv public affairs programs–are the best informed.

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By Nicholas Johnson

Compassionate Maturity

President George Bush has characterized himself a “compassionate conservative.” However appropriately you may think that label applies to our president, we’ve had some evidence recently that the phrase, compassionate conservative, is not the oxymoron many Democrats believe it to be.

As general semanticists were trying to get us to understand during the latter half of the Twentieth Century, much of what we see and hear, and virtually all of what we say, reveals far more about what is going on inside that electro-chemical soup we call our brains than anything going on in the “real world” of space-time events “out there.”

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By Gloria Feldt Like many women who identify themselves as feminists, Kathleen Turner and I are divided in our presidential candidate pick. We spent 18 months collaborating on her just-released memoir, Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles. During that time, we talked about politics quite a bit, because she sees herself as an activist as well as an actor.

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By Linc Bloomfield “Yes we can” is an inspiring affirmation that can help Senator Obama stretch his lead to become the Democratic candidate and 44^th US president. The flaw in that scenario is that plotters in the Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan have it in their power to deliver the election to Senator McCain. The economy and health care dominate the current debate. But that could change, with national security credentials the wildcard.

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By Charles Lindblom Gifts from corporations and the wealthy nourish many orchestras, operas, theaters, art galleries, museums, research institutions, schools, universities colleges, think tanks, hospitals, and political organizations such as lobbies, interest groups, parties, and campaigns. We encourage the gifts, as, for example, through tax benefits for qualifying contributors. Givers can afford the gifts they make, and we enjoy or are benefited by many of them. We find it a happy state of affairs except for a now and then concern about campaign finance.

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By Ralph Keyes While on a long drive I found myself listening to an interview with R & B singer Bettye LaVette that I might not have heard otherwise. Lavette is a great talker. Much of what the 61 year-old soul singer talked about was a decades-long interlude when her career was going nowhere, due in particular to a 1972 album that Atlantic Records chose not to release, then “lost”. (Fortunately its master was eventually found & the record finally released.) This interview was interleaved with excerpts of LaVette’s latest album, Scene of the Crime. At first my ears said “This woman’s voice is shot. What’s she doing still recording songs?” Then I listened more closely to a mesmerizing voice that could no longer fall back on technique. Its grit, feeling, and depth dialed direct from long experience. The songs of an older LaVette were far more powerful than ones they played by her younger self.

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By Mary Catherine Bateson.Hillary Clinton’s comments on Dr. King and President Johnson have set off a fire storm. What commentators have failed to realize is that they reflect both Clinton’s strengths and her weaknesses, as well as the real difference between her and Barack Obama. “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” Clinton said in a TV interview. “It took a president to get it done.”

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By Linc Bloomfield Dipping into Christopher Hitchens’ outrageous but readable bestseller “God is Not Great” brings to mind two different but highly relevant instances of the sometimes toxic religion-politics connection.

Whoever planned the brutal death of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto — Al Qaeda operative, home-grown terrorist, undercover agent of the Pakistani intelligence services — the murderer was undoubtedly a young Muslim male inspired by an Islamist leader who provided a cause that gave meaning to his life, the lure of fame through martyrdom, and, if needed to close the lethal deal, the promise of 72 black-eyed virgins in Paradise.

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By Gloria Feldt The headline summed it up so accurately it made my teeth hurt: “Republican Unity Trumps Democratic Momentum” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/washington/21cong.html

Robert Pear and Carl Hulse wrote the article that sums up Congressional Democrats’ 2007 accomplishments, or lack of them, in the New York Times, December 21. But whoever wrote that headline gets my vote for the Pulitzer http://www.pulitzer.org/

In fewer syllables than a classic haiku, he or she described perfectly the essence of American politics since the extreme right has held sway over the Republican Party.

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By Charles Lindblom In a market oriented system like ours, presumably we can make some good (if only rough) estimates of what we value — of what is really important to us — by looking at what we spend. We spend heavily on national defense and on recreation, for examples, and we do indeed value both.

Do we value truth — getting the facts straight and collecting those facts that guide how we live? We do indeed spend heavily on getting the truth or some feasible approximation to it. We spend enormous sums on public education, on universities and research institutions, on books and magazines, and now on electronically available information.

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By Linc Bloomfield The National Intelligence Estimate released last week (and for a change not leaked), stunned people with its conclusion that Teheran had stopped work in 2003 on nuclear weaponry, putting into question the increasingly belligerent White House rhetoric. Many breathed a sigh of relief at this happy ending to a highly troubling development in a country ruled by religious fanatics and a truly bizarre president. But things may not be what they seem. If you take a closer look and bear in mind some rules of bureaucratic behavior, you may move closer to understanding this surreal situation.

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By ILF Fellow John Vasconcellos, a lawyer, lifelong California legislator, a former California State Senator, where he headed the powerful Ways and Means Committee, and a major political influence. Now retired because of term limits he heads a movement called the Politics of Trust. http://www.politicsoftrust.net/

Have you ever wondered
What kind of a world
We human beings could create

If we were to find out
That in fact,
We are good-natured?

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By Gloria Feldt Sex educators (before the ‘abstinence only’ people made them stop talking about sex at all, which is a whole other story), use a technique called “desensitization” to help people get to where they can talk sensibly about previously verboten facts such as the proper names for body parts. Secrecy creates mystery and imbues a word or object with powers it doesn’t deserve. Because America’s social discomfort about sex makes us so nervous about dealing with the facts of everyone’s life, teachers sometimes have students say words like “penis” or “vagina” over and over until these words lose their mystical power and become simply the proper names for body parts. This allows learning about physical growth and development to proceed without twitters, just like learning about math, health, or social studies.

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