State of the Union

President Obama was at his best last night, using humor and inspiration to challenge Congress and the nation to stand by him as he tackles the nation's considerable problems. For one night, anyway, he repeatedly maneuvered Republicans into a rhetorical corner, forcing them to applaud even the need for health care reform. For what it's worth, I think that he reminded independents of why they voted for him.

How much impact this will have is anybody's guess. Democrats are in panic mode, preferring to snipe at each other rather than link arms and attack obstructionist Republicans. The tea-baggers, of course, simply want to dance on Obama's grave; this won't blunt them one bit. As to whether the speech stanches an independent drift to the Republicans, that depends on whether Congress passes meaningful economic legislation between now and November and on how the electorate perceives Obama's leadership. To me, it's vital that voters start seeing Republicans as partisan obstructionists. The Republicans will no doubt afford the opportunity, but Obama and the Democrats won't be able to take advantage of it if they attack each other.

The MSM doesn't seem to have a grip on the political climate at all. This article claims in one paragraph that voters are "seething" over the deficit, then asserts in the next that jobs are "foremost" in "many" Americans' minds. Simultaneously addressing the twin concerns of the deficit and jobs seems mutually exclusive: Paul Krugman never tires of pointing out that the New Deal recovery ground to a halt in 1937 when FDR turned his attention from jobs to a balanced budget. Republicans argue, of course, that retaining the Bush tax cuts will stimulate economic growth, even though (as this article points out) they can't cite a supporting economic model. Moreover, allowing the tax cuts to lapse is central to reducing the deficit. Democrats can credibly argue, if they choose to, that the Republican will add to the deficit, put no one to work, and make the rich richer. Why they wouldn't is beyond me, but then political panic is not a pretty sight.

So, the president made a fine speech last night, but any immediate impact will depend on his ability to rally congressional Democrats around its main themes. Given the craven nature of too many of them, I'm not optimistic. Beyond that, he'll have to appeal directly to the country, a tricky thing if your own party has gone wobbly. But that may be the only answer...

Speaking of craven Democrats, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) helpfully cut the president's legs from under him by commenting that "This is the time to tell the country we are fiscally sound." McCaskill added that "We have to avert a financial disaster that could occur if the world gets the sense that we can’t get our act together in terms of our deficit and our debt." Since no economist has predicted "financial disaster" if the deficit isn't brought to heel immediately, McCaskill's self-serving statement seems irresponsible at best...

Remember the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? There are 5,158 dead and counting. And drawing...

Jim "Mudcat" Grant, the first black pitcher to win 20 games and the owner of one of baseball's great nicknames, has fond memories of pitching and living in Cleveland during the Civil Rights era...

Irish neutrality and cautious cartography...

What is a Hoosier anyway?...

The Grateful Dead come to Texas Christian University in 1971...

Thanks to Foxessa for passing along this New Yorker article about the Tea Bagger movement. It's written in typical New Yorker fashion, in this case meaning that the author employs a reasonable, measured tone to explain an outlandish phenomena that he traces back to the Know Nothings and links to Richard Hofstadter's "paranoid style" in American politics:

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization... he does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated — if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes. (Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics")

The focus of the article is on a particular type I've known all my life: Reasonable on the surface, lofty in manner, patronizing and condescending, convinced that his life experience gives him a unique insight into the workings politics and the world, and an unwavering conviction in the infallibility of his own intelligence, intellectual skills, and acuity. Feh...

Jazz funeral: