Obama consolidates his gains

In January, President Obama had the biggest improvement in his public approval rating of his entire presidency. In February, Obama consolidated and built on his January "bump," by posting his second-most-improved month ever. This turnaround has set the clock back for Obama over a full year (in terms of his overall polling numbers), to roughly where he was in December, 2009. All in all, not a bad month for the president.

But that does come with a caveat -- Obama started the month strong, but then leveled off for the rest of February. His bump may well have "crested" this month, but even if this proves to be true, Obama looks most likely to plateau at the higher rate rather than falling back. In other words, he has successfully consolidated the gains in his approval rate over the past two months or so, rather than watching them bounce right back down.

Let's get right to this month's chart, so you can see what I'm talking about:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

February, 2011

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We are now roughly twenty months away from the next presidential election. But, rather surprisingly, only one Republican has announced he's running for president -- and he's not exactly a "top tier" candidate. So one has to wonder, where are all the Republicans?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying it is a bad thing (or, for that matter, a good thing) that the 2012 election cycle hasn't gotten off the ground yet. Presidential races, according to conventional wisdom, just get longer and longer by starting earlier and earlier each time. The joke right after the midterm congressional elections last year was that the next day was the kickoff for the '12 campaign. But the conventional wisdom has turned out to be wrong this time around. Because there is no "field" of candidates yet on the Republican side.

Exactly four years ago, in the winter of 2007, both major parties had a full slate of candidates. For the Democrats, everyone had already announced their candidacy, either formally or informally. The list of Democratic contenders, at the beginning of March, 2007, consisted of: Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, and Tom Vilsack. There were other names being bantered around as possible contenders (such as Wes Clark), but none of them wound up running in the end.

On the Republican side, all the heavyweights had already announced, as well as a few less-than-heavyweights. Their fringier candidates, for the most part, had held back and jumped into the fray later on, but in March, 2007, the following Republicans were already in the race: Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. Several other names were being batted around, some of whom went on to run and some of whom did not: Newt Gingrich, Chuck Hagel, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, and Tommy Thompson. One vanity candidate jumped in the Republican race very late in the game, but Fred Thompson never went much of anywhere after he formally announced.

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President Barack Hussein Obama, on June 4, 2009, gave a speech in Cairo, Egypt. This speech was widely praised both in America and abroad when Obama delivered it, as being both an overture to the Muslim world and a redefinition of some key American policies in the region (or, at the very least, a respectful explanation of continuing policies).

That was then, this is now. Things, to put it mildly, have changed a bit. President Obama should realize the opportunity this presents, and should soon give a sequel to his first Cairo speech, because the situation on the ground is moving so rapidly in the entire North African and Middle Eastern arena. It will be tough for Obama to thread the needle on what the emerging American policy is towards the uprisings spontaneously erupting in so many different countries (with so many different political situations) -- because America has always dealt with the region's various types of government on a case-by-case basis, according to our national interests (which can be largely summed up as: "oil"). Also because the current situation is so fluid. But just because it will be a hard speech to write doesn't mean Obama shouldn't make the effort, as soon as is humanly possible.

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Well, that was a busy week, wasn't it?

We've got so much to cover this week, we're going to have to move pretty quickly here. In international news, North Africa and the Middle East are still seething. The American news media, however, are (I actually heard this phrase being used by someone with a blowdried haircut the other night on television) experiencing "revolution fatigue." Seriously. They're bored with the whole storyline. Another dictator fell? Crowds of unarmed people being machine-gunned? Yawn. Don't we have an Oscars story we could run, instead?

Sigh.

Right now, of course, the main story is Libya, but other countries Americans cannot locate on world maps are also clamoring for change. Including, very inconveniently, Iraq -- where crowds of unarmed protesters have been shot at with live ammunition. But dead protesters in our forcibly-imposed democracy in the region is just so not according to the media's storyline, meaning it didn't get much coverage.

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I realize that there is a lot going on politically this week, on the state level and on the federal level (both domestically and internationally). I should probably be writing today about President Obama's new stance on the Defense Of Marriage Act, or Libya, or Bahrain, or the continuing attack on abortion rights here at home, or budgetary matters, or the Tea Party Republicans' overreach, or whether the federal government is going to shut down or not next week. All worthy subjects for commentary, for obvious reasons. But there's a more immediate concern today involving the mainstream media, where I feel a few calls and emails are warranted to the big networks. Because the most pressing issue on the domestic front is what is happening in Wisconsin (and Indiana, and Ohio, and many other states). There are two sides to this story. One side is the governor of the state, and his fellow-travelers on the right, who are ideologically committed to the destruction of public employee unions. The other side, quite naturally, is Labor's view of the situation. But the fabled "gatekeepers" of the "serious media" have apparently decided that only one side of this story needs be told.

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Everyone knows who "Big Brother" is, of course, because we all had to read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four at some point in our schooling. Big Brother is the fictional benevolent figurehead in Orwell's "negative Utopia" masterpiece, whose beaming visage is a front for a totalitarian police state which spies relentlessly upon its own citizenry. Television sets, in this future world, are both unavoidable and two-way -- broadcasting images of what you are doing in your own home to the government watchers. To some extent, Orwell's dark fantasy has become everyday life in some places (it's almost impossible to avoid being publicly filmed now in cities like London, for instance). But there's been a balancing revolution in surveillance as well -- which is more and more apparent in the recent news. I'm going to call this effect "Little Brother" -- citizens watching, filming, and reporting on governmental activities to a rapt worldwide audience. And we've already seen how powerful a tool this can be in the Middle East.

In ancient times -- say, twenty-five years ago or so -- the technology which caused this powerful effect either didn't exist or was in its bulky, heavy infancy. Small camcorders were becoming available which took video, but they were still rather expensive. So expensive (and bulky, for the most part) that most people who owned them didn't carry them around on a daily basis. Professional television and video cameras still weighed a ton, and were outrageously expensive, so they were still mostly the province of wealthy newsgathering organizations.

This limited what video was available to both the news organizations themselves, and to the wider public. The established media outlets were still firmly in charge of their "gatekeeping" function. The public only saw what a professional camera crew dispatched to the scene captured (whatever the scene happened to be). Or, at least, what parts of it were edited down for the evening news.

But twenty-five years, in technological terms, is several eons ago. First the internet burst onto the scene. Then blogging. Digital cameras became cheaper and cheaper, and more accessible. Cell phones became tiny, and affordable. Then cell phones merged with both the computer and the digital camera (still and movie), until you can now fit more technological power in the palm of your hand than was even available twenty-five years ago. What's more -- pretty much everyone could afford it. Which meant everyone with such a video-ready cell phone in their pocket became their own sort of "check and balance" on governmental powers -- and governmental abuses.

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Veteran CBS newsman Bob Schieffer read a commentary at the end of this week's Face The Nation that deserves some attention (and some applause, for that matter). He was speaking on a number of issues -- President Obama's recent press conference, the posturing both the White House and Congress is now engaged in over budget matters, and the impending government shutdown if a deal can't be worked out by the fourth of March. But, while circuitous, this commentary ended on a note which made me want to cheer [PDF download of the transcript, or watch the video]:

Now they’re [Congress] off for another vacation. This one to celebrate Presidents' Day, which reminds me: who but Congress gets a full week off for Presidents' Day? ... Here is the really scary part. Once the vacation break is over, there will be only four days or so to work out a compromise to keep the government running. Can they do it? Let’s hope so. But it is a long way to go with a short time to get there, which allows me to do my own posturing. What if we paid Congress only for the days members actually spent on the job here in Washington?

We might save a bundle on that one.

I have to say that I'm with you on that one, Bob.

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Happy Presidents' Day, everyone!

The two formerly-individual holidays celebrating Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday have been merged into a single federal holiday -- a holiday which, while intended to honor both Washington and Lincoln, has now become somewhat "genericized" (in name, at least) into a celebration of all our presidents. But what about the forgotten presidents? [Or, to be scrupulously accurate, "presidents"?]

I'm not talking about all those nineteenth-century Presidents of the United States who are now little more than dull and meaningless names to be memorized at some point during our schooling. Presidents such as James Buchanan and Millard Fillmore (and all the rest) are now little more than answers to trivia quizzes for those of us who aren't historians. No, I'm talking about even-more-obscure names from our nation's past. At least everyone recognizes the name James Buchanan, in other words, but how many of us know the name John Hanson? Or Cyrus Griffin?

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[Program Note: By popular request, I am reprinting the "meat" of Friday's column separately here today. I got a special request to run the "rant" portion as a standalone article, to facilitate linking to it. So if you've already read Friday Talking Points, Volume 155, there is no need to read the following -- but if you'd like to read the rant, without the rest of the FTP format, here you go.]

My "Class Warfare" Rant

Before I even begin here, I'd like to address what my critics will respond with, when they hear what I have to say. They're going to call these ideas "class warfare." You know what? They're right. I am calling on the middle class and the working class and all the other classes that make up over 19 out of every 20 Americans to start fighting back. Note that, please -- fighting back. Because there has indeed been class warfare waged in America in recent decades, and our class is losing -- and losing badly. The wealthiest of the wealthy -- the modern-day robber barons among us -- have been successfully waging class warfare on the rest of us for so long now that I am sick of it and I think it's time the rest of us fought back, rather than meekly submitting to the whims of the moneyed class. So, before my critics even have a chance to respond, I will save them the trouble -- you are damn right that there is class warfare happening in America. By admitting this, I'm urging the people who have borne the brunt of the situation to wake up and begin to stand up for what is right.

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Whenever anyone on the Left timidly suggests that it might be a good idea to raise taxes on the richest of the rich in America, the Right trots out a tried-and-true slogan to combat it: "class warfare." This is supposed to be a bad thing, because it pits one segment of society against another. No matter that one of these segments is a tiny, tiny slice of the public and the other is over 95 percent of the public -- it's supposed to be downright unseemly for the poor, the lower class, the blue-collar class, the middle class, and the upper-middle class to band together against the ultra-wealthy class. Calling it "class warfare" is supposed to be some sort of magic phrase in the political arena which puts any suggestions of asking the wealthy to sacrifice somehow out of the bounds of acceptable conversation.

But you know what? This "war" goes on anyway, currently fought on the battlefield of "cutting spending" and "attacking the deficit." The only problem is, the 95 percent are the ones losing this war, and losing it badly. Sooner or later, it's going to become apparent to the average American just what it's going to cost to continue letting the wealthy avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

The past week was chock full of examples of this, led both by the Republican budget plans emerging from the House of Representatives and the situation in the Middle East where economic inequality is a major factor in driving crowds out into the streets demanding a voice. The situation in Wisconsin reminds us that angry crowds of people demanding their rights does not always happen on foreign shores, but sometimes is a homegrown affair as well.

All of this has prompted me to write a rant this week, instead of my usual talking points. It's not exactly a call to the barricades, but more of a wake-up call. Because we're getting very close to seeing basic government services that Americans have enjoyed for generations disappear entirely, never to return, sacrificed on the holy altar of deficit-cutting. And that, to me, is worthy of a rant.

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