It's been a lot of years since I read Il Principe, Machiavelli's masterwork on political science (incorrectly translated as "The Prince"). Nick's basic thesis is that wielding power is not for the faint of heart; if you go about it timidly, you're certain to be deposed. Thus, an effective and durable leader must be ruthless from the beginning. Especially at the beginning, in fact, because that's when the leader is most vulnerable to overthrow. Machiavelli espoused a lot of actions which don't really fly in modern democracies with functioning judicial systems; he advocated, for example, that the New Prince, if he's interested in fundamental change, should act immediately to neutralize not only his political opponents but also his political allies who might rise up as rivals. And when he said "neutralize," you know, he didn't mean reduce their salaries. Stalin was said to be a great student of Machiavelli's work, which is why his inner circle came to appreciate that it was only a matter of time before Joe turned on them too.
Well, we don't do things that way anymore. Still, the underlying idea is still sound. A new leader needs to move decisively and boldly at the outset before his political opponents have a chance to organize their resistance. You can't actually kill them anymore, but you can still neutralize them in legal and institutional ways. Obama did campaign on promises of Big Change, so he does not have the argument that his adherence to Bushian policies, for example, or his Full Employment Act for Clintonista Wall Street gorgons like Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, are what he said he was going to do. In fact, a lot of what he has done is exactly what he said he was not going to do; a prime example is his principle of "preventive detention" for Guanatanamo inmates (and elsewhere) who can't be tried and can't be released (according to him), or his denial of habeas corpus for prisoners in places like Bagram in Afghanistan on the specious theory that the Supreme Court's ruling in Boumeddiene didn't specifically say it applied to inmates in places other than Guantanamo. Even if the circumstances of their capture and detention were exactly the same. Even if they wound up in Bagram because they were transferred from Guantanamo. Well, Boumeddiene didn't say specifically that it applied to inmates born on Wednesday, either.
The positions Obama's Administration has taken on state secrets, illegal wiretapping, telecom immunity and investigations of war crimes have been godawful. His Justice Department keeps shocking even conservative federal trial and appellate judges. Obama promised transparency but he never, ever delivers. Where the hell did all that money go that Congress doled out under the TARP? Well, it's better if you don't know, he says. There are just a lot of things the American people shouldn't be told, and it's for their own good.
On more substantive, crucial issues, like global warming and healthcare reform, his positions have been tepid, seemingly more designed to placate the "Left" than to lead. Bill Maher, who's a pretty good weathervane for moderate, liberal sentiment, took Obama to task last Friday night on "Real Time," and I thought rightfully so. Obama's defense spending is the same as Bush's (and Reagan's, in constant dollars). He's talking Social Security "reform" instead of blowing the whistle on the thievery from the "trust fund" which put us in this mess.
Look, the economy's not going anywhere anyway. The last 30 years were built on the unsustainable accumulation of debt. There are no bubbles left to inflate. As Nouriel Roubini says, the economy might stop bottoming out by the end of the year, but it's not going to grow because there are no engines to drive it. It's going to wallow in dangerous high seas, while the international community (such as those Brats at BRIC), start organizing an alternative currency system to replace the fiat dollar. Man, Barry, you think you got problems now...
Reading The Fifties by David Halberstam (and to repeat: what a shame this great man is gone), I was struck by this historical fact. Before 1949, the United States derived 2/3 of its energy from coal. Between 1949 and 1972 a basic shift occurred in which the U.S. derived 2/3 of its energy from petroleum. What made the United States great, along with its creativity and huge advantage in being the only intact manufacturing country to emerge from World War II, was that its economy became dominant during the Age of Oil, a resource which the USA had in abundance for a long time and which was amazingly cheap. Cars, freeways, suburbia, chain motels, fast food, the "Green Revolution" in food production-- all either invented here or brought to their highest expression, and all related to cheap oil. The energy regime built on oil has become a massive liability, both in terms of carbon emissions and balance of payments. Without a fundamental shift in energy paradigms, we're toast, literally and figuratively.
So, Barack -- stop screwing around with Gulfstream flights to New York and trips to the burger joints. This is not a public relations job you were hired to fill. The technology for a new energy regime, solar, wind, geothermal, is here. Read Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia - by 2030, zero emissions. It's doable and it's the only way out. You can't run an economy without energy or without jobs, and jobs depend on energy. Focus here. Tell Afghanistan and Iraq to go to hell. Stop promising aid every time Air Force One touches down in some foreign airport. Stop talking about how you're going to fix every country's problems but our own.
Niccolo would tell you that you've only got a brief window to establish your dominance. After that, your main constituency, the People, will begin to lose interest in you, and then your political opponents at Fox News and in the Republican Party will realize you can be rolled and contained. And then you're going to become like Clinton, looking for other things to do to pass the days in the Oval Office.
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