Change Comes To Washington
The 2008 election cycle was marked by a thrilling upsurge of civic participation and citizen engagement, with millions of new voters, the explosion of small donor contributions, and a sharp rise in participation. All this could add up to a transformative moment. And yet the basic institutions of American democracy are broken. Public trust in the government has plunged to its lowest level since Watergate. The very institutions that we will rely on to translate public discontent into last change badly need repair.
With imagination and verve, the new president must not only focus on short-term, tangible policy "deliverables" but also on renewing the systems of democracy that empower ordinary citizens and make all other changes possible. Today's new wave of government reform should not try to purify the messy, inevitably rambunctious world of politics. It should seek changes to catalyze the participation of wider numbers of citizens.
In the spirit of wider participation, on the eve on Inauguration we have invited a wide array of writers and thinkers to weigh in on their thoughts and hopes for a new Administration. We asked what projects or initiatives—other than the necessary plans for economic recovery and stimulus—would show that America is truly headed in a new direction? And how can the new administration and Congress prove we're moving beyond business as usual in Washington? For fun we invited each contributor to suggest a theme song for the inaugural.
Their answers are surprising, dramatic, both practical and idealistic. Yet they all celebrate the promise of fresh leadership and new ideas whose time has come.
Page One | Page Two
Bob Herbert | Nina Totenberg | John McWhorter | Eric Alterman
Stephen Carter | Susan Liss |Morton H. Halperin | Richard Thompson Ford
Bob Herbert
Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times
Barack Obama's primary task as president will be to give the national government back to the people. He has an obligation to take the government out of the greedy clutches of the very rich and well-connected, who have looted the Treasury, ruined the most powerful economy on earth, and inflicted extraordinary hardships on families struggling to make it from day to day.
Obama can take his cue from Franklin Roosevelt, who said in his first inaugural address, "This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly."
The most direct way for Obama to follow through on the mantra of change, which resonated so powerfully during his campaign, is to be a relentlessly honest voice in the White House, a president who can be trusted to be straight with the American people in good times and bad.
Nina Totenberg
Legal Correspondent, NPR.
As a reporter and observer of Washington for over three decades, I have some thoughts about governing to benefit both the public interest and the Administration’s own interest. I know that Administration’s hate to air their dirty laundry publicly, and hate to let people see the messy business of decision-making. But believe me, a little openness will save a lot of grief.
I was reminded of that last August when I interviewed former Attorney General Griffin Bell for what we both knew would be his obituary. “Trust is the coin of the realm,” he observed. “If the public doesn’t trust the Justice Department, we’re in trouble…so you need to let people know what’s going on, and who you meet with, and who’s influenced you, and who’s had a chance to influence you.” In persuit of that, everyday Bell published his Justice Department phone and meeting logs, so reporters could see who he met with and who he spoke to on the phone. “I’m quite surprised nobody else has done it,” he said. “ I don’t think it hurt me at all. In fact, he added with a chuckle, it helped me in a lot of ways because it cut down on the number of calls he got from Congressmen!”
Bell did something else that furthered openness and, I think, protected him and his administration from criticism. Whenever he overruled the career lawyers in the Justice Department, he offered them the opportunity to have their disagreement publicly disclosed. Few took him up on the offer; it raised his stock enormously within the Department; and it meant that there was little grumbling and leaking when he made a decision. It is one thing to be overruled for what one thinks are nefarious or political reasons; it is another to be overruled because the AG disagrees on the merits, and to have the opportunity to have your disagreement noted publicly.
There have been reams written about secrecy and the Office of Legal Counsel opinions. Suffice to say that they should be made public whenever possible. If they have to be sanitized to protect secrets, fine. If they can only be disclosed to the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, fine. But any time the basic thrust of a legal decision is kept secret, it means the Administration is out there on its own when and if there are public consequences.
Also remember that openness shields you from your natural political instincts. Joseph Califano, who served in the White House, the Defense Department, and as head of the then department of Health Education and Welfare, once told me with a wry laugh, “ Thank God for the press. It’s not that I loved them. I didn’t. But without them there, we all probably would have done a lot of stupid things.”
John H. McWhorter
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute. Columnist, New York Sun. Author of All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America.
Nothing hobbles black progress in poor communities more than children growing up with the idea that it is the norm for men to break the law, go to prison, and not be fathers to their children. People who come of age in communities in which this is the norm often go on to do exacly this. And, in the sense that they are only speaking the language in which they developed, they are truly innocents.
Welfare reform in 1996 began to change norms for poor black women. Prisoner re-entry programs intercept the life cycle of poor black males, and, can complete the job that welfare reform began. If an Obama Administration puts serious effort into just this, Obama will have assured his place in black history.
I remain agnostic as to theme music, but that's my two cents.
Eric Alterman
Columnist, The Nation. Author of Why We're Liberals.
First, close Gitmo. Second, appoint a distinguished bipartisan commission to investigate crimes committed by the members of the Bush administration under the cover of "national security" and forward that report to the United States Attorney General.
After that, I'll leave it to Barack. He seemed to know what he was doing better than anyone else during that whole election thing, after all... Though I would also suggest that he invite Bruce Springsteen to his inauguration to sing "These are Better Days."
Stephen Carter
William Nelson Cromwell Professor Law, Yale University
The question betrays a bias that history rejects. Although the Congress has occasionally adopted landmark legislation, new policy initiatives, from either party, tend overwhelmingly to pay off supporters. I think Presidents, with a few exceptions, do their most important work for America not in what policies they promote but in how they speak of the nation, how they lead, how they inspire.
Most historians, for example, consider Washington and Lincoln the best President's in our history. Washington's greatness came from his ability to create a nation, and Lincoln's from his ability to sustain it. Lincoln in particular spoke and wrote eloquently about America, and his words were published and debated all across the country.
When we think of great initiatives, we might think, perhaps, of Lyndon Johnson. Johnson is certainly remembered for pressing important legislation in the area of civil rights, but he was all but forced from office because of his unpopular war. Whereas Lincoln fought, and won, an unpopular war, in a cause about which most Americans were probably indifferent. (Anybody can fight a popular one.)
So, if America is truly to move in a new direction, the new President will speak of the nation in terms that excite us and join us together; will genuinely care about the views of those who disagree (so many have given lip service to listening, and then done what they planned to do all along); and will truly inspire us to attempt great things.
I am not saying that policy initiatives make no difference; of course they do. I am suggesting that it is an error to judge the greatness of a President by the legislation he supports: by that measure, no President can be great unless we happen to agree with his policies.
America today is burdened by the hardened tendency, across the political spectrum, for most of us to put ourselves and our desires first, and to call that a politics; and by the tendency to demonize those who disagree with us, and call that rationality. If President Obama can lead us away from these tendencies, he will go down in history as one of the truly great ones.
Susan Liss
Democracy Director, Brennan Center for Justice
First, in the first moments after noon on Tuesday, January 20, President Obama should put an immediate hold on all rules and regulations issued by the outgoing administration within the last 120 days. These "midnight" rules then should be reviewed as quickly as possible to ensure that they comply with core democratic values: that they will benefit all the citizens and not just the favored few.
Second, it is imperative that the new President and the new Congress do everything in their power to immediately restore the rule of law in our nation. One important step will be to repair the damage wrought over the last eight years to the Department of Justice. Another would be to establish a bi-partisan 9/11-Style Commission to examine possible crimes by Bush administration officials, thereby enabling the new Administration to move forward and yet not allow those who had positions of public trust and may be guilty of crimes to avoid responsibility for their actions.
Third, and perhaps most critical to restoring citizens' faith in our democracy, the new Congress should pass and the President should sign legislation that would modernize voter registration by making it automatic and permanent, potentially adding 65 million additional citizens to the voter rolls.
Finally, the President and the Congress can show that a new day has dawned by passing real campaign finance reforms that elevate the role of small donors and diminish the influence of the rich.
Morton H. Halperin
Senior Fellow, The Center for American Progress. Executive Director of the Open Society Policy Center. Director of U.S. Advocacy, Open Society Institute.
The President should announce our intention to adhere to our international obligations and our ideals. To that end he should announce the end of torture, secret prisons and renditions to torture and appoint a commission to examine what was done in these areas since 9/11 and report to the American people. He should announce our support for the ICC and the CTBT and indicate that he will work with the Senate on early ratification of both. He should announce our intention to seek election to the UN Human Rights Council and to work actively to make it a more effective body.
Richard Thompson Ford
George E. Osborne Professor of Law, Stanford University. Author of The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse.
Dear Mr. President-Elect Obama (or can I call you Barack? I've gotten so many personal emails from you, Michelle and Joe that I feel we're sort of buddies now.)
I hope you will be the first President to seriously confront racial segregation and urban poverty—the most glaring hangover from the Jim Crow era of overt, state sanctioned race discrimination.
You've done a great job already by setting the right tone for black America—for all of America?—by emphasizing the need for industriousness, education and responsible behavior. Far from talking down to black people, you've been willing to treat your black constituents like adults and citizens capable of changing their bad habits managing their own affairs.
But personally responsibility is not enough: the tragedy of inner city isolation is that it locks people into an environment in which both lack of incentives and lack of good examples undermine those who would act responsibly. People need a realistic chance to escape such environments and they need the socialization to allow them to thrive in the (relatively) prosperous mainstream
Given the economy it shouldn't be as politically difficult as it otherwise would have been to create for the poor and unemployed jobs fixing the nation's crumbling infrastructure and improving our public services. Such a works program needn't be and shouldn't be race based, but it will disproportionately benefit poor blacks and inner cities because they are disproportionately unemployed and in need of improved infrastructure. It appears your team has announced plans to do something like this—I very much hope they don't let the partisans of a demonstrably failed laissez faire ideology derail this vital initiative.
The government should also encourage states, local governments and private parties help to undo residential segregation. This would include a serious effort to discourage local exclusionary zoning practices that keep the poor out of more affluent areas where jobs are more plentiful and public services are well funded. And we need greater incentives for public schools to seek race and class integrated student bodies (this will, unfortunately, be more difficult to do because of the Supreme Court's misguided decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District—an opinion that turns the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause on its head effectively prohibits racial integration. And while we're on the topic of the courts, now that you will have some influence over the selection of federal judges, I hope you'll stop the tide of reckless judicial activists such as Justices Roberts and Alito and bring in some people who will be faithful to the true meaning of the Constitution as it has evolved through decades of fruitful interaction between the people and the judiciary.)