At year’s end a mixed record—from the Arab Spring to riots in Greece and Italy to Occupy Wall Street to demonstrations in Moscow—suggests that not all aspects of 2011′s democratic protests were positive.

(By “democracy,” I mean government by the people typically expressed through majority rule.)

One difficulty in any discussion of democracy is that many Americans assume that they live in one—but our political system isn’t purely democratic.

The Founding Fathers, wary of mob rule, shied away from direct democracy and instead established a democratic republic. (The Constitution, for example, doesn’t include the word “democracy.”) They limited voting rights, created institutional checks-and-balances, and protected private property and civil liberties through the Bill of Rights.

With that for context, here are five questions about 2011′s democratic ferment:

• Could elections in Egypt and Libya, the byproduct of the Arab Spring, place the Moslem Brotherhood or other radical Islamist groups in power? No one really knows who the voters of Egypt and Libya will elect as their rulers. If Islamists win control they are likely to institute sharia law. That would not represent a positive development for Moslem moderates, Christians, women, gays, and others who will face repression or a curtailment of their human rights.
• Will strongman tactics by the Shia majority in Iraq lead to conflict with the Kurdish and Sunni minorities? Iraq’s fragile democracy faces the challenge of sectarian strife without the buffer of U.S. forces. Civil war is not outside the realm of possibility if Shia prime minister Nouri al-Maliki continues on his current confrontational path.
• Will austerity measures—imposed by the European Union—spark further popular unrest in Greece, Spain, and Italy? Many in the Mediterranean debtor nations have expressed their anger over the EU’s tough economic medicine in street protests. German and French bankers and bureaucrats in Brussels are effectively calling the shots, not voters which—in one sense—is profoundly anti-democratic. I’d bet that Greeks, for example, would vote to dump the Euro and go back to the drachma if given the chance.
• Will Russia’s Vladimir Putin reclaim the presidency in March through free and fair elections or through vote fraud? The recent mass demonstrations in Moscow reflect a growing discontent with Putin’s party after years of corruption and growing authoritarianism.
• Will the spring bring a revival of the Occupy Wall Street movement? The OWS protesters who set up camps in cities across the U.S. reflected discontent by a majority of Americans with unbridled capitalism and growing income inequality. But beyond the outrage, there hasn’t been agreement over who is to blame and what should be done. Populists on the Right attack Washington for aiding and abetting crony capitalism while the Left wants to focus on Wall Street shenanigans and the impact of globalism. Whether OWS resurfaces with any influence will in large part depend on whether President Barack Obama decides to run in 2012 as a economic populist. If he does, the country is in for a debate over the issue of the proper role of the government in regulating business.

What are some of the lessons from 2011′s protests? One is that when people feel that the political system isn’t working they will end up in the streets. Whether that protest is effective will depend on whether it is truly representative. (One of the measures of the level of freedom in a society is how well dissent is received and tolerated.)

Another lesson is that simple democracy alone is not enough. For a just society, majority rule needs to be restrained by the rule of law, an independent judiciary, a free press, and protections for the human and civil rights of minorities. That’s the best way to avoid both civil strike and the tyranny of the majority.

Copyright © 2011 Jefferson Flanders
All rights reserved

November was the month of an ascendant Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, suddenly became a serious contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. As Herman Cain’s scandal-plagued campaign faltered, Gingrich became the latest darling of anti-Mitt Romney conservatives. Many on the Right have remained suspicious of the former Massachusetts governor, questioning his ideological purity, and by month’s end Gingrich had vaulted into the lead in many national polls of GOP voters.

Campaign observers cite Gingrich’s debate performances, and his espousal of conventional conservative economic and social views, as sparking his recent rise. For the moment, at least, many Republicans seem willing to overlook Gingrich’s past marital troubles, his ethical troubles while in Congress, his Washington insider status and acceptance of “consulting fees” from Freddie Mac and health insurers, and his shifting positions on global climate change, immigration, and health care mandates. Conservatives looking for a champion of their limited government philosophy are attracted to Gingrich’s way with words.

I got a sense of that dynamic when I attended Gingrich’s appearance at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics on November 18. The former Georgia Congressman visited Cambridge along with his wife Callista to show their documentary (“A City Upon A Hill: The Spirit Of American Exceptionalism“) and to answer questions from the audience.

Gingrich’s considerable rhetorical skills were on full display at Harvard. He handled an initial “mic check” interruption by Occupy Boston and Occupy Harvard (“We are the 99%”) with a quick riposte that prompted applause: “I think we are the 100%. I think we are all Americans.” (The hecklers were quickly escorted from the event).

In his comments after the screening of the documentary, Gingrich sought to position himself as the logical conservative heir of Ronald Reagan. He summarized the case for supply-side economics: “Reagan had four pillars to his economic policy: cut taxes, cut regulation, develop American energy and reward, honor, and talk well of people who create jobs…the opposite of Obamaism which is higher taxes, more regulation, anti-American energy and class warfare.”

In brushing off a question about his ethics, Gingrich cited his government service and again echoed Reaganesque themes: “I’ve spent 53 years trying to bring smaller government, lower taxes, and promote strong American nationalism.”

In his Harvard performance, Gingrich lived up to his reputation as an eclectic, and often undisciplined, Big Thinker who likes to pepper his comments with historical examples (fitting for a former history professor). He happily opined on the European class system; Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Cooper Union speech; how the Wright brothers succeeded in manned flight where a Smithsonian Institution effort, financed by Congress, had failed; the “introduction to politics among large primates” found in Frans de de Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics; and the details of his late-in-life conversion to Catholicism.

Gingrich repeatedly promoted the idea that if he was the Republican nominee he would challenge Obama to three Lincoln-Douglas style debates focused on the economy, “American exceptionalism” (versus European-style socialism), and national security. His debate proposal is good primary-season politics: it reminds conservatives of the sharp contrast between candidate Obama and the rhetorically-awkward John McCain in the 2008 presidential debates. For those Republicans who don’t want a repeat performance in 2012, Gingrich offers a solution.

How much presidential debates will matter in 2012 is an open question. (I think the unemployment rate will be a more important factor). In any event, there is some irony in the situation. Will Republicans select as their candidate a supremely confident former legislator with an academic background, a fondness for lofty rhetoric, and a lack of executive experience? Strangely enough, they may. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

Copyright © 2011 Jefferson Flanders
All rights reserved

After more than a month of symbolic protest and heavy media attention, the Occupy Wall Street movement has highlighted global discontent with unbridled capitalism.

The protesters’ catchphrase (“We are the 99%”) has resonated with many American voters and taxpayers angry over growing income inequality, government bailouts of financial services firms, excessive executive compensation and bonuses, and an unregulated, Wild West attitude on Wall Street that many blame for the financial crisis of 2008.

So after raising these issues to the forefront, where now for Occupy?

In the United States, at least, there are three probable paths for this leaderless movement in the near future:

1. OWS fades in importance as it fails to convert its inchoate protest into meaningful action, harsh weather drives off its foot troops “occupying” cold weather cities, and the media loses interest.

There are signs that the Occupy Wall Street movement may have peaked. Sustaining an outdoor protest during the winter months in New York, Boston, and Chicago will be problematic. Reports of criminality at Occupy sites, and stories about conflict with drug-users and the homeless who have gravitated to the protests for free food and shelter, will hurt the OWS image and hamper recruiting efforts.

Even more important: OWS will lose its media coverage over time. As long as city authorities are content to let the protesters camp out in public places there will be no conflict to attract TV cameras and sympathetic journalists. Celebrity visits will evaporate as media attention wanes. In short, OWS will become yesterday’s news story.

By late January it’s quite likely that the Occupy movement will be seen in the same light as, say, the continuing antiwar protests led by Cindy Sheehan outside the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas—deserving of only occasional media attention.

2. OWS acts as the Tea Party of the Left, as President Barack Obama and Democratic Party-affiliated labor unions co-opt its populist themes and ride them to electoral success in 2012.

For this scenario to materialize, several things have to happen. Obama and his political advisers need to conclude that he can win reelection only by embracing OWS rhetoric and running a divisive campaign focused on income inequality and middle class economic insecurity that proposes taxing the rich as the solution. And OWS must moderate its far-Left rhetoric, adopt a more culturally middle class image, avoid violent confrontations, thereby becoming more acceptable in the eyes of independent swing voters.

Will this approach work for Obama and the Democrats? Polls show Americans are sympathetic to the criticisms of the current economic system voiced by OWS. Can Republicans be tied to the mortgage crisis and its connected Wall Street financial skullduggery enough to motivate swing voters in key Electoral College states like Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, New Mexico and Colorado? It’s a risky approach, because this new-found populism may ring false. Obama benefited from significant Wall Street political contributions in 2008 and he has surrounded himself with financial sector figures (Tim Geitner, Larry Summers) as key advisers in the first two years of his administration.

Republicans will seek to make the 2012 election a referendum on Obama’s performance in addressing high unemployment. Will bashing the private sector (the source of employment) as greedy make sense to anxious voters? And what will such a strategy do for moderate Democratic Congressional candidates?

3. OWS becomes increasingly confrontational with violent clashes between protestors and police, causing President Barack Obama and Democrats to distance themselves from a movement perceived as too radical for the mainstream.

Any images of Occupy protesters battling police damage the Occupy brand. OWS is a leaderless movement that seeks to make decisions through consensus. The OWS General Assembly process hasn’t been effective in Oakland, for example, where it appears that hotheads and anarchists triggered the donnybrook with city police.

As OWS members try to figure out what comes next, there will be voices calling for a more aggressive approach. Officials in some cities may feel they have to intervene on health-and-safety grounds and close down the tent camps. Clashing with the authorities is a sure-fire way to attract media attention, but it will make the Occupy movement toxic for Democratic politicians who don’t want to get on the wrong side of the “law-and-order” issue.

The end game

What will happen with the Occupy Wall Street carnival? I’d bet that the first scenario, where the Occupy movement becomes a waning sideshow, is the most likely to occur. I doubt President Obama and the Democrats will risk any backlash from moderates and independents by aligning themselves too closely with the rhetoric of the Occupy protesters. Mayors and city officials paying attention to incidents in Boston and Oakland will avoid using force. They’ll recognize that they are better served by waiting out any occupation of their public spaces rather than trying eviction. The greater involvement of union organizers in the movement should act as a moderating influence as well.

So in the end, I’d hazard the guess that Occupy Wall Street will end with a whimper, not a bang.

Copyright © 2011 Jefferson Flanders
All rights reserved

Ten years after, even Al Qaeda has grown tired of the delusions of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists: the terrorist network’s English-language magazine, Inspire, recently chided Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for not properly crediting Al Qaeda as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

“The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government,” an article in Inspire says. “So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?”

Apparently Al Qaeda’s leadership doesn’t like it when people blame Bush-Cheney, Zionists, Mossad, Wall Street financiers, the military industrial complex, or the Babylonian Brotherhood (a secret group of reptilian humanoids) for the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field outside Shanksville, PA on September 11, 2001.

Don’t expect Inspire‘s proclamation of Al Qaeda’s responsibility for 9/11 to change any Truther minds. After all, the reasoning will go, Al Qaeda is controlled by the CIA and disseminates disinformation on command. Truthers will also argue, no doubt, that the CIA drone attacks in Yemen that killed the American-born cleric Anwar Awlaki and an editor of Inspire, Samir Khan, were designed to silence them and/or remove them as potential witnesses.

While its support has been fading, there is still some life in the Truther movement. A public opinion survey conducted for the BBC this year found that 15% of Americans thought that a U.S. government conspiracy had been behind the attacks. While it is true that similar numbers of Americans believe in astrology, alien abductions and that the NASA faked the moon landings, it’s still jolting to find that many people accepting the toxic notion that the government would murder thousands of its own citizens.

A conspiracy did guide the attacks on September 11, but it involved those young jihadists dispatched by Al Qaeda in what the editor-in-chief of Inspire, Yahya Ibrahimnow, calls “The Greatest Special Operation of All Time.” While Al Qaeda undoubtedly planned the attacks, what remains unclear is the extent of financial and operational support the radical group received from Saudi citizens both in the Middle East and in the United States. Some recent revelations have raised troubling questions about Saudi involvement and U.S. attempts to downplay their severity.

Exploring the Saudi connection

It’s well known that some 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, and that the Bush Administration approved the quick exit from the U.S. of Saudi royals and members of the extended bin Laden family in the days after 9/11. While the Saudi monarchy has vigorously denied any connection to 9/11, the actions of Saudis in the U.S. before the attacks have raised many questions.

The Miami Herald broke a deeply disturbing story on Sept. 8 that a Saudi family in Sarasota, Florida had vanished from a gated community there on August 30, 2001. They reportedly left behind a brand new PT Cruiser in the driveway of their luxury home and a refrigerator stocked full of food. According to counter-terrorism sources, the family (Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii, his wife Anoud and their two children) had direct contact with three of the 9/11 hijackers receiving pilot training in Venice, Florida and had phone contact with some of the other Al Qaeda operatives in the U.S.

The Herald reported that former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, said he had not been informed about the Sarasota situation, saying it “opens the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11. … No information relative to the named people in Sarasota was disclosed.”

A week later the FBI’s head agent in Tampa, Steven Ibison, released a statement to the St. Petersburg Times saying that his agency had investigated “suspicions surrounding” the al-Hiijjii family, but found no evidence tying them to the hijackers.

The reports of these connections prompted Rep. Kathy Castor and Graham to call for further investigations. Graham told MSNBC that he spoke with the White House’s chief of counterterrorism to ask that the administration look into the Sarasota case.

It would not be surprising if such an investigation revealed deeper ties between Saudi nationals in the U.S. in 2001 and the Al Qaeda network and less than stellar fieldwork on the part of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies charged with counter-terrorism.

Our lack of preparedness for 9/11 has become more and more apparent. Recent revelations about passenger screening at Logan Airport (disclosed in the settlement of a lawsuit by the family of one of the passengers on United Airlines Flight 175) suggests that the screeners were poorly trained, ill informed about terror threats, and that many of them were immigrants who spoke limited English.

Further proof came with the release by the Rutgers University Law Review of audio tapes showing the chaotic response by civil and military aviation controllers to the 9/11 skyjackings. Contrary to what FAA and military officials told the 9/11 Commission, they did not understand, or respond quickly enough, to the cascading events of that Tuesday morning.

It’s understandable why many in the government and law enforcement resist exposing the failures, inadequacies, and incompetence of the American counter-terrorism effort prior to 9/11. Nor does there appear to be any appetite in Washington for exploring the involvement of individual Saudis in the execution of Al Qaeda’s plot, as Saudi Arabia is our “ally” in the oil-rich Middle East. But we deserve to know the full story of what happened that day in September, no matter who is embarrassed.

Copyright © 2011 Jefferson Flanders
All rights reserved

It was a long, contentious political summer dominated by the battle over the federal debt in Congress and skirmishes in the states over spending and taxes.

Partisans looked to spin what was happening, and there was some colorful language, none of the slogans or phrases seemed memorable. It seems as our politics grows more petty and small, the rhetoric employed also shrinks as politicians and candidates gravitate to catchy and simplified soundbites.

Take the attempt by Congressional Republicans to “brand” their proposed budget with the slogan: “cut, cap and balance,” which was derided by Democrats as “duck, dodge and dismantle.” The Democrats at least had alliteration going for them, but neither formulation was particularly catchy.

For their part, the Democrats tried to assign blame after Standard & Poor’s dropped the country’s credit rating, dubbing it the “Tea Party downgrade,” but White House officials muddled the message by attacking S&P’s for errors in its analysis and conclusions.

House Majority Leader John Boehner scored some metaphorical points in arguing that negotiating with the White House was “like dealing with Jell-o.”

“Some days it’s firmer than others,” he added. “Sometimes it’s like they’ve left it out over night.”

The most vivid language of the summer came from Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D, Mo.) who tweeted that the debt deal that President Obama struck with Republicans was a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi agreed, adding that this legislative meal included “some Satan fries on the side.”

What exactly is a Satan sandwich? While the consensus among language mavens and political journalists was that it is the equivalent of a (to put it delicately) “crap sandwich,” it seems Cleaver, a United Methodist pastor, was making a theological statement based on his longer explanation:

If you lift the bun, what you see is antithetical to everything the great religions of the world teach. Which is take care of the poor, take of the aged. I am concerned about this because we don’t know the details. And until we see the details, we’re going to be extremely non-committed, but on the surface it looks like a Satan sandwich.

Cleaver, who is also chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, voted against the deal.

Don’t expect any of the slogans or metaphors of the summer of 2011 to stick. They’re disposable. The professional spinners and wordsmiths are already testing new catchy phrases in focus groups and brainstorming sessions, aware that the public’s attention span is limited.

Candidates and their consultants will keep trying, because finding those elusive buzzwords that strike a nerve with voters (“Close the missile gap,” “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” “It’s the economy, stupid,” “Hope and change”) can mean the difference between victory and defeat at the polls.

Copyright © 2011 Jefferson Flanders
All rights reserved

Who ever would have thought on the last day of July in the year 2011 that the United States, the world’s superpower, would be two days from default?

Or that Apple would have more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury?

Or that the debt rating for the U.S. would be in jeopardy of slipping from AAA?

Or that the recovery of the U.S.economy—the world’s largest—would show signs of faltering, with GDP growth estimates continuing to fall?

Or that unemployment (as measured by Gallup in its daily tracking survey) would remain stuck at virtually the same level—roughly 9%—as at the end of July 2010?

The truth: no-one would have predicted the economic and political conditions prevailing today. Conventional wisdom held was that the U.S. would enjoy steady economic growth in 2011 with declining unemployment. That hasn’t happened. Also a surprise: that Washington’s political leadership—especially President Barack Obama—didn’t move more decisively (and quickly) to defuse the debt limit crisis.

What other surprises await?

A “double-dip” W-shaped recession in the U.S. could occur. Some observers, like Douglas McIntyre of 24/7 Wall Street, argue that it has already begun.

It’s not clear that the European Union has resolved its debt crisis with the latest bailout of Greece; there are continued worries about the national finances of Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal.

Simply put, the global economic forecast is problematic.

Political implications

It may be that the last-minute debt ceiling deal in Washington will calm markets and help the economy by reducing uncertainty.

Even if that is so, 2012 is an election year and the lagging economy will be the paramount issue of the upcoming campaigns.

Last week’s disturbing report of slower GDP growth represents a significant hurdle for Democrats. It’s hard to envision a surge in private sector hiring based on such slow growth. And if there is no improvement in the dismal unemployment numbers, the odds on the Democratic Party retaining the Presidency or control of the Senate decline dramatically.

The dramatic recent decline in support for President Obama among independent voters is, it can be argued, a direct reflection of their discontent with the economy.

Does this all mean that the die is already cast for Republican victories in 2012? The short answer is: no. More than a year from the election, the picture can change dramatically. Infighting in the Republican Party could leave residual hard feelings and less-than-optimal turnout by “the base.” Independent voters in key swing states may be put off by Tea Party rhetoric. A last-minute crisis—domestic or foreign—might swing undecideds behind President Obama.

So it’s possible that the results on November 6, 2012 will include Democratic victories in close Senate races and the reelection of President Obama, and we’ll ask: “Who would have thought?”

But with current economic trends, I wouldn’t bet on it.

What can, or should, government do to respond to the challenge of persistent high levels of unemployment in the United States? Some 14 million are unemployed and another

So what can be done? The somewhat counter-intuitive answer is to think small.

Small employers generate most new net jobs and start-ups—businesses less than five years old— are the true job creators, as the Wall Street Journal noted late last year in “Startups Key to Job Growth.“

A study by Small Business Administration economist Ying Lowrey estimated that “between 1997 and 2008 new entrepreneurial businesses created 3.5 million new jobs a year. One million of those were for paid employees; the remaining 2.5 million were the jobs entrepreneurs created for themselves.”

You would never know that from the focus in Washington (and at the state level); policy makers seem most concerned about catering to Big Business. While these firms can create lots of jobs (think of McDonald’s plans to hire 50,000 this year), at the same they are also laying off lots of workers. The net: large corporations do not move the employment needle.

Big Business does, however, employ Washington lobbyists and donates heavily to the campaigns of incumbents, both Democrats and Republicans. So it’s not surprising that government policies favor bigness and that presidential candidates look for photo ops at Boeing and Caterpillar production facilities.

That needs to change. Here are four ways to encourage more start-ups (and the jobs they create):

• State and local governments should make it easier to start a business by fast-tracking the paperwork and permits a new enterprise needs to open its doors. Anthony Randazzo, director of economic research at Reason Foundation, argues: “Local leaders should work to limit red tape, simplify the regulatory process, and do everything possible to create a hospitable licensing climate for business.”
• State and local business taxes and fees should be kept as low as possible. Early-stage companies should be funding growth, not government. Communities that want to attract start-ups should also make sure commercial property taxes are reasonable.
• Encourage investors to put money into (always) risky start-ups through lower marginal tax rates on long-term capital gains at both the state and federal level. Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner (in his Boston Globe op-ed “Creating small business jobs“) noted that numerous academic studies showed that low marginal tax rates on capital gains was “one of the most critical contributors to the entrepreneurial environment.”
• Encourage loans to early-stage businesses and small firms through federal guarantees or relaxed loan-to-capital ratios for the Small Business Administration (as recently proposed by former President Bill Clinton).

While these steps alone won’t restore employment to pre-Great Recession levels, by spurring entrepreneurial activity they should help in generating jobs. It’s time to think small.

These days, President Barack Obama could well ask: with friends like these, who needs enemies?

Indeed, the harshest criticism of the President’s foreign and domestic performance has come recently from high-profile figures on the Left who had avidly supported Senator Obama in the 2008 campaign. In some cases they have excoriated Obama in deeply personal terms. And many of those with liberal-left buyer’s remorse have gone public with their discontent.

Consider Princeton academic Cornel West who described the President, a fellow African-American, as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.” West added some racial swipes at the President, claiming that he “has a certain fear of free black men. It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin.” (Joan Walsh of Salon called West’s outburst a “vicious and deeply personal rant.”)

Then there is actor Peter Fonda, one of the President’s many Hollywood supporters in 2008, now feels differently. Obama’s handling of the Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill angered Fonda, and he decided to launch an attack while at the Cannes film festival, telling reporters: “I sent an email to President Obama saying, ‘You are a f***ing traitor,’ using those words… ‘You’re a traitor, you allowed foreign boots on our soil telling our military – in this case the Coast Guard – what they can and could not do, and telling us, the citizens of the United States, what we could or could not do.”

For Matt Damon, another left-of-center movie star, Obama’s education policy apparently triggered discontent. In April he complained: “I really think he misinterpreted his mandate. A friend of mine said to me the other day, I thought it was a great line, ‘I no longer hope for audacity. He’s doubled down on a lot of things, going back to education… the idea that we’re testing kids and we’re tying teachers salaries to how kids are performing on tests, that kind of mechanized thinking has nothing to do with higher order. We’re training them, not teaching them.”

(Obama did have a clever response to Damon, delivered at the White House Correspondent’s dinner: “I’ve even let down my key core constituency: movie stars. Just the other day, Matt Damon — I love Matt Damon, love the guy — Matt Damon said he was disappointed in my performance. Well, Matt, I just saw The Adjustment Bureau, so…right back atcha, buddy.”)

It is not only celebrity leftists (Fonda, Damon, Harry Belafonte, Ed Asner, etc.) who have ratcheted up the criticism of the President. The ACLU and civil liberties advocates have been dismayed by the Obama Administration’s national security and defense policies.

Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald has been sharply critical of Obama’s continuation of many of President George W. Bush’s War on Terror tactics (rendition, indefinite incarceration of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, etc. ) and his aggressive foreign policy (the increase in drone attacks, ordering the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden, and intervening in Libya).

Greenwald recently wrote that “Obama has either equaled or exceeded Bush/Cheney” in asserting presidential power. “That Obama refuses to seek Congressional approval for his war (and his top officials even suggest they have the power to defy any Congressional bans) — while Bush sought and obtained Congressional authorization for his — should be added to that ever-growing list.”

Ignoring the Peanut Gallery on the Left?

The best political course of action for the President, who can be somewhat thin-skinned, is to ignore the invective of his disappointed supporters on the Left. He must recognize that most voters will judge him on his performance, not on his ideological purity. Democratic Party activists may hate compromise (as do their counterparts in the Tea Party), but compromise is the stuff of effective politics.

To some extent, Obama faces a self-created problem. His “Hope and Change” campaign and his lofty rhetoric in 2008 raised unrealistic expectations. It was inevitable that he would fail to keep promises both small (like shutting down Gitmo) and large (declaring, absurdly, in his acceptance speech: “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”) and that his failure would alienate some, especially many liberal-left “true believers.”

Yet catcalls from the Left may actually help Obama with 2012 swing voters—such criticism serves to validate Obama as a moderate, not the wild-eyed socialist as some on the Right characterize him. In fact, having over-the-top critics on the extremes—Hollywood leftists and right-wing Birthers—helps locate the President in the center of the political spectrum. And in American politics, the center is where you win elections.

Many of the major news stories in April 2011 were very strange. In fact, when historians check the news archives for the month they may wonder whether a full moon lasted for 30 days, encouraging some very lunatic behavior (pun intended).

“The Donald” rises

It was a month in which the mainstream media in the US focused on the 2012 presidential hopes of real estate mogul Donald “The Donald” Trump.

Trump launched a series of rapid-fire attacks on President Obama, questioning whether he had been born in the US, whether he had deserved admission to Columbia and Harvard Law School, and whether Obama was the worst American president ever (to which Trump gave an answer of “yes.”)

Trump also pushed populist themes, bashing China for its trade policy and threatening to seize Arab oilfields, all the while immodestly praising his own business prowess and intelligence. His performance caused conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer to call Trump “the Al Sharpton of the Republican Party, provocateur and clown.”

Stranger still, public opinion surveys showed Trump rising to near the top of Republican presidential candidates in popularity, and near the end of the month a Gallup/USA Today poll showed that only 38% of Americans definitely believed that Obama had been born in Hawaii.

That prompted the White House to release Obama’s long-form birth certificate which showed that he had indeed been born in Honolulu’s Kapiolani Hospital on Aug. 4, 1961. In a brief news conference Obama denounced ““sideshows and carnival barkers,” dismissed the entire controversy as “silliness,” and argued it was time for a serious discussion of the issues—before flying off to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show (leading to this Daily Caller headline: “Obama: I don’t have time for ’silliness’ – I’m late for Oprah.”

Amazingly, “The Donald” declared victory: “I am so proud of myself because I’ve accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish. I feel I’ve accomplished something really, really important and I’m honored for it.”

Federal efficiency on display

April also featured stories of the always awe-inspiring competence of federal public servants.

We learned that the Federal Reserve loaned billions to banks during the financial crisis and the banks promptly bought treasuries, which, as David Weidner of MarketWatch pointed out, didn’t produce the desired lending to American businesses as designed. Weidner noted: “The move yielded an easy profit for the banks, since the Fed was charging almost nothing to borrow and Treasuries were paying at least decent yields. Nothing illegal about the move, except that the easy Fed money was supposed to juice the economy.”

Also in April, Henry P. Krakowski, the head of the air traffic control for the FAA, resigned after numerous reports of air traffic controllers sleeping on the job.

From Kentucky came word of the frisking of a 6-year-old girl by Transportation Security Administration screeners. It was a pat-down so intense that the girl’s parents posted it in a YouTube video, spurring calls for legislation to exempt small children from invasive searches.

The US Postal Service issued a stamp honoring the Statue of Liberty that used an image of the half-size replica from the Las Vegas casino New York-New York, instead of one from the actual statue itself.

Nasty figures from the 1960s resurface

For some reason, two particularly nasty figures from the 1960s—a bad decade if there ever was one—resurfaced in April’s news budgets.

Cult leader and mass murderer Charles Manson, now 76-years-old, gave an interview to Spain’s version of Vanity Fair in which he warned of global warming and called President Obama “a slave of Wall Street.”

Then lawyers for Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, came forward with the bizarre story that Sirhan had been a victim of a mind-control plot and hadn’t actually killed Kennedy in 1969. The evidence? Hypnosis sessions with Sirhan where he described how “the girl in the polka-dot dress” manipulated him, and how there was a second gunman.

Three cups of reality?

April was a very bad month for Greg Mortenson, author of the best-selling memoir Three Cups of Tea, and co-founder of a charity building and running schools in Afghanistan, as questions were raised about his honesty.

As USA Today reported, a 60 Minutes investigation charged that Mortenson, a mountain climber, “fabricated his now-famous tale about being rescued by Pakistani villagers in 1993. It also raises questions about the financial arrangement between Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute, the charity he founded in 1996, and alleges that many schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan that Mortenson’s charity claimed to establish either don’t exist or were built by others.”

Mortenson denied the allegations but a detailed defense was delayed as he went into the hospital for heart surgery.

File all of this under “strange but true.”

The reasons for American disagreement over President Barack Obama’s decision to go to war in Libya can be found in historical and fundamental differences over the proper role of the United States in world affairs.

While it’s easy to see any argument over US foreign policy in the traditional terms of internationalists versus isolationists, the situation is more complex than that. The armed intervention by the US and its Western allies in Libya has created some strange political bedfellows.

Republican neoconservatives and many Democratic liberals have supported the attacks on the forces of Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Republican libertarians like Rand Paul and antiwar Democrats like Michael Moore, Ralph Nader, and Dennis Kucinich have lined up in opposition.

So it isn’t a simple case of Right versus Left, or conservative versus liberal, or Republican versus Democrat. Any analysis of the reaction to the Libyan intervention must move beyond common political labels.

Foreign policy scholar Walter Russell Mead has developed an explanatory model that helps make better sense of the situation. In his 2001 book Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World, Mead argued that the thinking of four American leaders—Alexander Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson—shaped our approach to global politics.

Mead summarized these four schools of thought in a 2010 Foreign Policy piece:

…Hamiltonians share the first Treasury secretary’s belief that a strong national government and a strong military should pursue a realist global policy and that the government can and should promote economic development and the interests of American business at home and abroad. Wilsonians agree with Hamiltonians on the need for a global foreign policy, but see the promotion of democracy and human rights as the core elements of American grand strategy. Jeffersonians dissent from this globalist consensus; they want the United States to minimize its commitments and, as much as possible, dismantle the national-security state. Jacksonians are today’s Fox News watchers. They are populists suspicious of Hamiltonian business links, Wilsonian do-gooding, and Jeffersonian weakness.

American foreign policymakers have been able to draw on these different schools at different times, Mead has argued, allowing them to fashion flexible and effective strategies. Wilsonian values of democratic change and respect for human rights have been particularly appealing around the world, leading “the most active, intelligent, and forward-looking elements in other countries regard the United States sympathetically.”

Mead noted that Senator Obama campaigned on a Jeffersonian platform in 2008 (calling for a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq) but, after some agonizing, has adopted a more Wilsonian position as President Obama (endorsing a troop surge in Afghanistan and waging a greatly expanded  “war-by-drone” against Islamic extremists).  The Libyan “humanitarian intervention” advocated by Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Hillary Clinton is unabashedly Wilsonian.

President George W. Bush and the neocons advising him were also Wilsonian in their aggressive promotion of democracy in the Middle East. George H.W. Bush approached foreign policy from a Hamiltonian perspective—thus he stopped well short of seeking regime change in Iraq, unlike his son.

Jeffersonians split into two groups, but both think American foreign policy “should be less concerned about spreading democracy abroad than about safeguarding it at home.” Those on the left generally reject the use of force, and want the resources spent on foreign wars directed to domestic needs. Left-of-center Jeffersonians favor limited government overseas and expansive government at home. A second group of Jeffersonians, traditional libertarians (and civil libertarians), want limited government, period. They heartily dislike the taxes (or borrowing) needed to pay for American military adventures and the funding of a permanent military-industrial complex.

The Jacksonians and foreign policy

Most middle-class Americans are Jacksonians, according to Mead, and have a populist suspicion of the New World Order schemes of Hamiltonians and Wilsonians. Jacksonians have supplied America’s warriors since the first Scots-Irish emigrated to the colonies, and their heartland support is vital to any successful lasting military operation.

Jacksonians place America and Americans first, and as nationalists are wary of threats to American sovereignty. They aren’t wild about free trade or international organizations, like the United Nations. If the US commits its military overseas, Jacksonians believe in applying overwhelming force and in achieving total victory—they hold little interest in “nation-building” or peace-keeping operations.

American presidents need to persuade Jacksonian voters that their foreign policy safeguards the homeland and supports the economic well-being of the average person. Mead made the point in Special Providence that American elites had lost the confidence of middle Americans, and that judgment seems as trenchant now as it did in 2001. Mead wrote then:

Hamiltonian trade policy looks to many Americans like a scheme to drive Americans’ wages down for the sake of corporate profits. Wilsonian support for humanitarian interventions looks like the road to a never-ending series of expensive, morally ambiguous, and potentially bloody engagements. As always, the young men and women on the front lines in these interventions will not be drawn primarily from the homes of the elites… Jeffersonian squeamishness about American power and the use of force strikes Jacksonian sensibilities as weak and muddleheaded, while the Jeffersonian critiques of the motives and morals of American foreign policy seem almost anti-American.

George W. Bush built a Wilsonian-Jacksonian coalition with American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Jacksonians supported war in Afghanistan as an appropriate response to 9/11. They were convinced by Bush that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction represented a threat to American national security, and backed the second Gulf War. Popular enthusiasm for US intervention in Iraq faded only when it became clear that the WMD danger had been exaggerated, and that a long-term occupation and “bringing democracy to the Middle East” was part of the Bush agenda.

Obama’s Libyan challenge

Obama hopes to recreate the Bush coalition for his Libyan involvement. By casting the war in Libya in moral terms, he wins Wilsonian backing. By arguing that the intervention is in the national interest, he hopes to attract Jacksonian support. And to hedge his bets, and to assuage the vocal Jeffersonian wing of the Democratic party, he insists the US part will be limited and brief in duration.

There are some glaring contradictions built into this strategy. Obama’s case for humanitarian war in Libya appears hypocritical when contrasted with his passivity in the face of human rights abuses by American allies in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, to say nothing of the slaughter in Somalia or the Congo. Wilsonian morality can look like moralism, as Mead has noted.

Moreover, many Jacksonians are suspicious of the multinational basis of the Libyan action. They are disturbed by Obama’s apparent preference for UN Security Council action versus Congressional approval when sending Americans into harm’s way. They worry it cedes American sovereignty. As nationalists, Jacksonians have no problem with unilateralism.

Further, many Jacksonians (and many Jeffersonians) remain concerned about the economy and high levels of unemployment, especially among the middle class and working poor. They question the wisdom of another costly military intervention in the Middle East and wonder whether the US can quickly extricate itself from Libya, as Obama has promised.

The political reality: Obama may struggle with his inner Jefferson, in Mead’s clever phrase, but he can safely assume liberal Democrats will vote for his reelection in 2012 even if he pursues—in a limited way—Wilsonian policies. He can’t afford to lose Jacksonian swing voters, however. Many will accept humanitarian interventions, like Libya, but only if they are short and decisive and don’t appear to be derailing domestic progress.

In explaining his decision to act in Libya, President Obama rightly appealed to an instinctive American desire to shield and protect the vulnerable (“Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.”) Few Americans would reject the limited use of American force to stop genocide as a last resort and when local or regional options are exhausted. But if the Libyan intervention ends up moving beyond that limited goal, and US troops find themselves into the middle of a tribal civil war, or American air support brings Islamist extremists to power in Tripoli, then the response will be significantly different.