Echoes of Roosevelt's 2nd Inaugural?

FDR: "We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it... ...Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively, we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. . . . We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster."

Obama, defending the social commitments of FDR's New Deal (just some of his many reforms): "The commitments we make to each other — through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security — these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great."

Credit to E.J. Dionne for noticing the parallel.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/01/21/obamas-unapologetic-inaugural-address/

More progress? Amazing!

Looks like women will officially be allowed to participate in combat. This narrows down the range of life options where men can be men among men, but it's hard to oppose it on principle. Whether this passes the US House immediately (I am unclear as to the necessity of such legislation), or the GOP must be embarrassed by misogynistic speeches for a few weeks first, I'm calling exiting defense secretary Leon Panetta's order qualifying women for combat positions a win:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/mccain-i-respect-support-allowing-women-in-combat

President Obama takes over mantle of leadership for Liberalism and the Social Safety Net; Reid to fill in as hidebound Democratic leader trapped in past of illusory bipartisanship and institutional functionality

Obama Defends Liberalism, attacks Libertarian Vision of Impoverished Society; Harry Reid takes up Obama's Fallen Arms to Defend Illusion of DC Not Bound in Institutional Gridlock, Fights Possibility of Future Progress. Future Unclear.

Yesterday, President Barack Obama gave perhaps the most important speech of his presidency (you can watch it, his second term inaugural, here): important for what it said, and important for what it says about how he'll handle the political landscapes to come--all in all a bracing draft for those of us wary over his softball bargaining over the fiscal slope just before the new year (hint: Obama was initially correct when he asserted that the dynamics of the bargaining were such that he could get 800 billion dollars in taxes on the rich 'for free,' but he ultimately caved to a smaller number to avoid short-term economic chaos). Though it wasn't reported as such at the time, many of thought his first inaugural a dud in practical terms, and in retrospect it has come to be seen as such: a promise of a bland vision of post-partisanship premised on the idea that if we could all come together and bridge our nasty rhetorical divides, we could move forward as a nation.

This was, of course, a false dream--the Conservative right was then undergoing a regime of ideological purification that only began to end on election night, 2012, when the extremity of their ideological vision, only on something like full display after they retook part of Congress after the 2010 elections, was broadly defeated at the polls. Before that, the controlling portion of America's right-wing party (representing perhaps only some 20-40% of the populace, depending on the question at hand) accepted neither the legitimacy of any sort of centrist or centre-left government, nor the desire to compromise with the opposing party for the (imperfect) benefit of all.

This time around, though, Obama had it right. Before January 21st 2013, he's had a disconcerting tendency to campaign on popular center-left platforms such as preserving Social Security, raising taxes on the rich to reduce the deficit, and regulating Wall Street, but compromised away many of his promises once in office--since his tendency seems to be to negotiate with whoever's in the room, and, in DC, on economic issues (which are the fulcrum issues of our day), the range of who's in the room tends to range from centrist ex-Clinton/Rubinites (Larry Summers, Tim Geithner), to the mainstream right (fast disappearing after 2006), to the radical right that mobilized in 2009. Yesterday, though, was different. Obama's 2013 inaugural was a broad, if measured, defense of Social Liberalism, including implicit rebukes to Paul 'innumerate con-man' Ryan's vision of America as one in which benefits like social security, rather than stabilizing our society, preventing poverty, and giving us a platform from which to take economic risks (points Obama made), encourage a sort of economic vampirism. Obama's won the election, but he's going outside the bargaining room to build support for conserving the vision of the social contract that's existed since the days of Franklin Roosevelt. It's uncertain how much he'll be able to accomplish under a second term, but this is a strong sign that he'll not only defend operational Liberalism (which most Americans support) rhetorically, but that he'll play that game rather than relying on gestures of good faith and overly generous fiscal offers to the opposition (i.e. trading away grandma's--and your--economic security) to build a governing consensus.

Given this important development, it was probably impossible that some Democratic leader somewhere wouldn't be doing some political strategizing and advocacy that was both profoundly stupid, and utterly at odds with the reality of what's necessary for America to have a functioning Federal government. Sure enough, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) of the US Senate has stepped up. The situation? The necessity for some first steps in Filibuster reform. To quote Johnathon Chait on the issue:

"The filibuster is a longstanding problem of American government, and one that some of us wanted to solve even when Democrats were the ones using it. Once a rarely used tool of strong dissent, it has become a routine supermajority requirement that the Republican party has now turned into a device to halt even the basic workings of government. Republicans have regularly blocked even non-controversial appointees to essential government agencies."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/05/harry-reid-turns-against-filibuster.html

In the same column, Chait quotes a May, 2012 speech in which Reid laments not supporting the very filibuster reform effort he is now opposing behind the scenes, for reasons, apparently, of institutional tradition that seem to this reader to ignore the very real problem the US has right now with legislative gridlock at the Federal level, much of it stemming, since 1993, from the filibuster (for history buffs, the filibuster has been problematic for over a century; a previous attempt at reform in the seventies worked for a while by making it less disruptive, but has now become part of the problem--because now any senator can block a bill without even making a speech about it or taking the senate floor; it's easy, practically anonymous in terms of public exposure, and increasingly common on anything of consequence, with the result that it takes sixty percent of the votes of the upper chamber to pass anything). So this is not a new problem.








Here's the history that led to Reid's well-justified meltdown (quoted above). In the 110th Congress (i.e. 2009), minority Republicans seized on the procedural trick known as 'filibustering' to kill any bill that didn't have a supermajority of 60 votes. They almost killed healthcare reform with it, and they used their 60 vote leverage to block all sorts of other important legislation, such as a measure making it easier for workers to form unions and bargain for better pay; they used it to bargain down Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the economic act that stopped the 2008 recession, but was too small to lead to a recovery any time soon) until it was too small to do anything but prevent utter disaster. They blocked whatever they wanted, except for the seven weeks or so during July of 2009 when Democrats held a 60 seat majority. The 'filibuster' has a long history, much of it ignominious (the House got rid of it in the 19th century, and Progressive champion "Fighting Bob" LaFollette had poison slipped into his water by one of his colleagues when he was declaiming a currency bill in 1908), but the rule was more or less restrained by a collection of social norms in the Senate until, in 1993 and 2009, minority GOP congresses escalated the blockages to previously unheard of levels, both times in largely successful efforts to block Democratic initiatives when that party was in the majority. After 2009-10, Reid demanded a shift for the 111th Congress, and received assurances from (senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell that there would be less filibustering in the following session. The result? Consider the promise unfulfilled: there's been so much blockage that little more than half as much legislation was passed in 2011 and 12 as in the previous session. And, obviously, dire problems the US faces have gone unaddressed.

As a result, the Democratic majority has demanded a rules change at the start of the new session, i.e. in Obama's second term, with Senators Tom Udall of Colorado and Jeff Merkley again leading the charge.
http://www.merkley.senate.gov/

 No one's even advocating getting rid of the 60 vote limit (everyone knows the Senate is too hidebound in its own traditions to consider such a thing), but on the first day of the session, the Senate can constitutionally reset its rules with a mere 50 votes, to make sure that anyone filibustering a bill (i.e. preventing it from coming to an up-or-down vote) at least has to get down on the floor and talk, the way Senators did it in the old glory days when they were blocking the tyranny of the Federal Government's civil rights bills. However (!) Reid finds this change, a return to the talking filibuster, such a violation of the (non-functional) Senate body of traditions, that he's using a technicality to keep the Senate on its first 'day' in the new session while he lobbies his own caucus to water down the make-them-talk reform in favor of something that, as far as anyone can tell, will amount to nothing substantive at all.


Harry's not a bad man, my friends--he's an ex-boxer with a pretty good record of fighting for good things for the American people (and against bad ones), though he's not nearly so confrontational in the Senate as he was in the ring, and has not often distinguished himself as a leader. But why exactly is Reid doing this, this trying to maintain the status quo in a non-functional legislative body? I can't say for certain, but sometimes people who are part of an institution for many years are unable to see the flaws within it, even when they deal with them every day, right in their faces.

Update: NY Mag has this quote from Harry Reid's book, in which he discusses his objections to Republican gestures toward reforming the filibuster in 2005 (though I should note they were talking about a more radical reform: eliminating the filibuster completely, or else eliminating it for confirming judicial appointees. For the record, I support (and supported) both these measures, but right now we're just talking about making the filibuster visible on C-SPAN by changing it from an invisible procedural blockage that doesn't even require being in the room to the visibility of talking on the Senate floor, so the public can see who's responsible for holding up bills that may be necessary for the common welfare):

Reid:

(Qualified) Summary of Jackson's accomplishments in 'The Lord of the Rings'

UPDATED 1-6-13 (edited for clarity, lack of repetition, and to add a few details for [I hope] greater depth and precision regarding the Lord of the Rings films accomplishments and shortcomings--i.e. part 7 of accomplishments, and a few extra references to storytelling shortcomings, original Star Wars, John Boorman's Excalibur (1981), etc)

Over the past few days, both online--here and on Facebook--and in in-person conversations with several different people, I've tried to assess the continued draw of the (in my view) often mediocre Tolkien film trilogy by Peter Jackson and his writers, which, while making some needed changes (no Tom Bombadil digression, though the missing Barrow-wight episode that follows on from that is a less clear judgment point--considering that it's one of the better horror scenes from Tolkien, Jackson might have made good use of it in developing his world and playing a good scene), seems to include some low-quality film-making such as Hollywoodized slapstick and vulgarity, simplified, sentimentalized and supermodern characters, and some uneven plot-modifications and editing.

A number of reasons for liking this material came forward for people's love of the material (aside from the Balrog scenes, which almost everyone agrees are quite good from almost any perspective), no ne of them overwhelming alone, but together interesting and somewhat compelling, if sometimes dependent on low standards set for the genre by contemporary, bloated and uninspired science fiction epics and various fantasy film failures through the 1970s and 80s:

1) Aside from the slapstick comic relief (Merry, Pippin, Gimli), which may have been useful demographically, the films basically took themselves seriously on their own terms, laying out an epic unapologetically, and not feeling the need to wink at the viewer or dismiss the seriousness of the plot and setting the way, say, 'Big Trouble in Little China' (otherwise a relatively sincere 1980s effort to import a foreign fantasy genre) often did.

1X) Many like the competent and melodic, if arguably bland and undeveloped scoring by Howard Shore.

2) Folks credit the films for a lot of basic competence in doing things properly that had never before been funded and executed in the genre, especially in live-action film:

It may seem faint praise to note that 'Fellowship' and its sequels had some big, expensive battles and wide panning shots, as well as some mysterious and (over?)dramatic dialogue, but there really isn't anything to compare it with, in this sense: no other fantasy films of the same scale and production value--what may seem cliched to an earnest reader of many fantasy novels was here expressed in more or less suitable epic format in a way that, for the most part, just hadn't been done on film since 1983 or so, and then in a different genre (I am speaking of the science fiction or science fantasy films known as 'Star Wars,' which have a very different context and setting, as well as metaphysical assumptions about their world). While confused and sprawling in some respects, with the plot moderately muddled the film was mostly serious in its tone and scale.

3) While Jackson included a lot of schlocky Hollywood-esque plotting and characterization, to the detriment of the material, but he compensated for this by producing some memorable images and scenes (Balrog, things regarding Gandalf, and some people like the modern-ness of Viggo Mortensen's interpretation of the completely rewritten Aragorn--which, while contrary to his namesake, is apparently effective in an angstily combatively manner, to many 21st century viewers--even if hair and makeup must have worked pretty hard to maintain that four day shave for nearly every scene in the films).

4) Some of the very things that made the films so different from the books in many ways, i.e. the well-funded b-grade horror version of Shelob, the great queen of spiders, were enjoyed by an audience used to such film conventions (i.e. enjoyable, teasing horror in place of legendary ambience and a moment of dark ages Germanic heroism)

5)  The outsider's charm. Jackson and his New Zealand crew aren't quite the scrappy underdogs they've been made out to be at times--let's face it: Peter Jackson owned his own visual effects shop beforehand--but their team formed a marked contrast to the bloated establishmentarian inertia that seemed to be behind the coeval, apocryphal Star Wars prequels (which are so bizarrely bad, the less said the better--but, man, does anything else look better when compared alongside). The Lord of the Rings benefitted, in its reputation, from being a relatively bold and energetic undertaking by relatively young filmmakers, and from direct comparison Star Wars' coeval retroactive diminishment of itself.

6 While folks seem to agree, in retrospect, that some of the characterization could have been better, some believe these films should not be judged as art, but by the lower standards of modern entertainment. While the philosophical case for such low standards is, on the whole, damaging to the fantasy genre (as well as a demonstration of ignorance of its better material), this is a view held by many.

7) Some excellent realization of Tolkien's original material, such as the Gollum scenes in which the perverted monster's Dostoyevskian polyphony of character (two voices, one person) is portrayed quite faithfully on the silver screen.

On the whole, the films seem to have some staying power. However, I'd note that in many respects they're still fairly shoddy, especially as regards character and spatial awareness, and that there's plenty of room out there for more fantasy film to be made that makes better use of our medieval cultural background and just good, solid writing and storytelling with, say, a clear moral and conceptual vision about the world, both the real and the fantasy vehicle. To some extent this is already being realized in works like TV's 'A Game of Thrones,' the first season of which holds much more sophisticated, realistic, and dark writing than Jackson's films (the second season is a little spottier, with some retcons which seem to show poor judgment and excessive sexiness, though the production values and choices of the show are probably better the second time through [the capitol city has traded up from the distinctive but semi-Arabic Malta to a larger, more mossy, European feel] ). Such a vision was realized in the '70s and 80s in the epic, heroic and mystic storytelling the first Star Wars films, as well, though this is a different subgenre (sadly, more direct fantasy analogues, like John Boorman's unevenly written Excalibur, notable for its resolution of various Arthurian narratives into one whole as well as for  Nicol Williamson's eerie performance as Merlin, and Ridley Scott and William Hjortsberg's Legend, are all failures to some extent, as well as having fewer financial and visual resources to work with than Jackson's much later films.

On the whole, I'm still inclined to say: a fantasy vision is great thing to have, but if melded to a few real ideas, more beauteous on-location shooting than New Zealand has to offer (its islands have varied temperate terrain, but really don't compare in lushness with the rainforests of British Columbia or US's Olympic Peninsula, not to mention the related Redwood ecosystem slightly to the south, or, hell, the Adirondacks, if you want to shoot based out of New York), and some real darkness and human storytelling, fantasy has a chance to be successful artistically, as well as commercially, and this is something more worthy of striving for. The visions of not just Tolkien (who was important in the genre, but not influential until after about 1950), but Lord Dunsany (the most influential of writers before 1950, and to whom Tolkien owes a great debt), William Morris, Fred Saberhagen (tight plots, amazing visuals, compelling characters), Lloyd Alexander, Lois McMaster Bujold and many others wait eagerly to be made into smarter, more dramatic, more potent films than we've seen thus far in this genre, which has been undersold since its beginning.

Let's hope three volumes of 'The Hobbit' in 3D doesn't wear out the audience on the genre before we see material with something to say.