Why am I not surprised?

President Obama’s plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials — barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees — discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is “scattered throughout the executive branch,” a senior administration official said. The executive order Obama signed Thursday orders the prison closed within one year, and a Cabinet-level panel named to review each case separately will have to spend its initial weeks and perhaps months scouring the corners of the federal government in search of relevant material.

I agree with the Talking Dog that this bears all the signs of people desperately flailing around trying to cover their asses.

Apparently, to President Obama “bipartisanship” doesn’t mean kowtowing to members of a minority party who are being a pack of obstructionist assholes.

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he [President Obama] told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.

One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.

“There are big things that unify Republicans and Democrats,” the official said. “We shouldn’t let partisan politics derail what are very important things that need to get done.”

Cool.

That wasn’t Obama’s only jab at Republicans today.

In an exchange with Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) about the proposal, the president shot back: “I won,” according to aides briefed on the meeting.

Republicans are up to their usual tricks of spreading lies about the President’s proposal while they insist that the only possible solution to the financial crisis is tax cuts. One story they are spreading, for example, is that most of the funds in the stimulus package wouldn’t be spent until 2010. Ryan Grim explains why this is a lie. See Scott Lilly for more.

Kos asks, “Why does Obama keep thinking that ‘appealing for bipartisanship” will move a single Republican vote?’ Based on what he said yesterday, I’m not sure that’s what President Obama thinks. But it depends on what you mean by “bipartisan.”

An online dictionary defines “bipartisanship” as “of, relating to, or involving members of two parties; specifically: marked by or involving cooperation, agreement, and compromise between two major political parties.” In other words, it is two parties working together, not Party R trying to undermine the other for political advantage, while Party D passively lets them get away with it.

I think President Obama was trying to signal that if Republicans get serious about governing, and if they bring serious ideas to the table, he is willing to listen to them and work with them. But if they continue their usual pattern of playing childish political games, they can go to hell.

The adult was telling the children they can sit at the grown-ups’ table as long as they sit up straight and behave.

People across the political spectrum have got a weird idea that “bipartisanship” means Democrats must meet Republicans halfway, even if the Republicans are being ridiculous and undermining everything the Dems are trying to do. Frankly, I don’t think that’s what it means.

First, Republicans are a minority party, and an increasingly regional party. The majority of Americans should not be held hostage by the minority. Republicans have not earned the right, or the votes, to be met halfway. They can be met as far as voters’ endorsed them, but that’s less than halfway.

Second, bipartisanship requires “cooperation, agreement, and compromise.” If Republicans are just going to lie, grandstand and obstruct, there can be no bipartisanship, and that will be their fault. I think President Obama is signaling that he doesn’t want to shut the Republicans out of the governing loop, but no one will work “with” them until they demonstrate they can be worked with.

So far, they haven’t.

Update: Steve Benen reminds us of how Republicans define “bipartisanship.”

The GOP’s use of abortion as a wedge issue hurt them more than it helped them in the November election. I believe Barack Obama would have won anyway. But I also believe that had John McCain chosen Joe Liberman or Tom Ridge — both pro-choice — as a running mate instead of Sarah Palin, the vote among Independents would have been a lot closer.

Given what looks to me to be a clear reality, what will Republicans do? What will Democrats do?

Digby says the White House issued this statement today (I can’t find it elsewhere):

“On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose.

“While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue, no matter what our views, we are united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and families in the choices they make. To accomplish these goals, we must work to find common ground to expand access to affordable contraception, accurate health information, and preventative services.

“On this anniversary, we must also recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights and opportunities as our sons: the chance to attain a world-class education; to have fulfilling careers in any industry; to be treated fairly and paid equally for their work; and to have no limits on their dreams. That is what I want for women everywhere.”

This sounds good to me. Even so, there is some twitchiness on the Left that talk about reducing the number of abortions is somehow going to lead to making concessions to the anti-reproductive rights crowd. In the same post linked above, Digby writes,

But, as you all know, I mistrust all this “common ground” business. So far, it’s perfectly fine. We have always been for access to contraception, comprehensive reproductive health care and education and help for expectant mothers. Let’s hear it for the progressive agenda being considered “common ground.”

But, I am curious as to what the people who believe abortion is murder think they are getting out of this. We know that many of them do not believe in birth control and the last thing they want is to educate people in anything but abstinence. Yet they have supposedly signed on to this common ground concept, so they must feel they have made serious concessions. What do they want in return?

I hadn’t heard the anti-reproductive rights crowd had “signed on” to anything. I sniffed around, and apparently some religious policy wonks in Washington came up with some “third way” manifesto that is being pushed as the “common ground” on which pro- and anti-reproductive rights people are supposed to meet. As Fred Clarkson says, what’s being left out of the “common ground” is a clear support for a woman’s unfettered right to elective abortion, at least until the late second trimester. Thus, “abortion reduction” is being taken as a code for “abortion restriction.”

A few points: First, it’s important for everyone to understand that the hard core of the anti-reproductive rights movement hasn’t “signed on” to anything. This third-way, common ground business is being promoted by what Fred C. calls the Religion Industrial Complex — “that sprawling array of political manufacturers and journalistic conveyor belts that deliver their products to market from Inside the Beltway.” This RIC is made up of people like Jim Wallis and Amy Sullivan, who have promoted themselves to media as spokespersons of some vast and reasonable moderate religion movement but who in fact aren’t speaking for anyone but themselves and their careers. I know a great many genuinely religious progressives (including Fred Clarkson, who is very nice), and they are as fond of Wallis as they are of heartburn.

So, basically, no one is behind the common ground manifesto except the people who wrote it. But news media haven’t caught on to that yet, and probably a lot of politicians haven’t, either.

The anti-reproductive rights movement never will compromise, because they are fanatics. There have been several times since the Roe v. Wade decision in which some do-gooders attempted some kind of “common ground” approach, in which the emphasis would shift from banning abortion to reducing the rate of abortion through various programs. It seems like such a fresh, original idea every time someone thinks of it. These attempts are always futile, because anti-reproductive rights people cannot be reasoned with and will not budge from their extremist positions. (And see? I’m even being nice and not calling them “Fetus People.”)

In another article, Fred quotes the Rev. Anne C. Fowler:

“… the moral reality of women’s lives is that sometimes abortion is the best moral choice.” …

”What is missing from this document,” she continued, “is recognition of the sacredness of all life, and a moral tradition that allows us to weigh relative values, of potential life versus a lived life in its full spiritual complexity.”

I can already see the religious absolutists latching on to that word “relative.” They cannot abide “relative.” In their world, everything is either absolutely right or absolutely wrong; absolutely good or absolutely evil. But the real world isn’t like that, nor are all systems of morality based on absolutes.

Fred continues,

The idea that abortion is sometimes the best moral choice is the view of many major religious institutions representing tens of millions of American Christians, Jews, Unitarians, and others. Many of these institutions are represented in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), including major mainline Protestant denominations (such as the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ), the major bodies of American Judaism, and such organizations as the YWCA.

As I believe I’ve already written, Buddhism generally discourages abortion but considers imposing moral absolutes on people to be worse.

I agree with the Rev. Fowlers that it must be said that sometimes abortion is the best moral choice. I think most people understand that, even if they cannot articulate why it is true.

However, I don’t think that talking about reducing the rate of abortion is necessarily a bad thing or always a code word for “selling out women’s rights.” If we really did “expand access to affordable contraception, accurate health information, and preventative services” it would almost certainly reduce the rate of abortions. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that.

By now you’ve heard that President Obama has issued orders to close Guantanamo Bay. He had clearly said several times during the campaign and transition that he would do so. Nevertheless, no end of lefties who have been reading between the President’s lines like soothsayers reading chicken entrails predicted he would not close Guantanamo Bay. That it may take a few months is understandable. It’s going to take some time for the new team to understand what’s really going on down there and to separate people who might really be dangerous from the innocents who got swept up in indiscriminate nets.

Michael Shear of the Washington Post also writes,

Sources familiar with the briefings said Obama also will sign two executive orders altering CIA detention and interrogation rules, limiting interrogation standards in all U.S. facilities worldwide to those outlined in the Army Field Manual, and prohibiting the agency from secretly holding terrorist detainees in third-country prisons.

In other words, he’s putting an end to torture and closing CIA “black sites.” Again, some on the Left — a minority, but a loud and annoying minority — doubted he would do these things, even though he said he would do them.

Also:

President Obama is moving quickly to undo the Bush administration’s regime of secrecy.

Yesterday, he repealed a 2001 executive order granting former presidents, and vice presidents, the ability to seal their papers forever.

It’s like he read my mind.

Random thoughts:

Harold Meyerson has an excellent column today evaluating President Obama’s (ooo, that still sounds so good) inauguration speech. It echoes a lot of my own thoughts, especially this part:

“The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity but because it is the surest route to our common good.”

We measure the merit of government, he added, not by how wide a berth it gives the market but by “whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”

With those words, the age of Reagan was ceremoniously but unambiguously interred. For 30 years, the widely shared prosperity created and then enjoyed by the Greatest Generation has been eroding. Obama’s speech was the first presidential inaugural to address the narrowing of American prosperity and to announce the intention to broaden it again.

The age of Bush was also ended, more abruptly, in the very first sentence that concerned foreign and defense policy. “As for our common defense,” Obama said, “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” Moments later, he added, “Power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please.”

With that, the neoconservative perversion of American ideals — and American security — was flushed to its reward, and a new doctrine, at once more idealistic and realistic than neoconservatism ever was, was articulated by our articulate new president.

Righties, of course, are disparaging the speech as just so much pretty rhetoric, but it was anything but. This was not a soaring, inspirational speech, but a serious one that precisely laid out the values on which Obama intends to build his administration. Let’s hope he is true to his word.

At the Guardian, Naomi Wolf also praises the speech as “sophisticated” and a marked departure from the fake optimism of recent political speech.

The great leaders in the US weren’t the cheerleaders who promised ­morning in America. They were the ones that forced us to look in the mirror. Since Reagan there has been this tradition, which has become a cliche, of promising morning in America, this fake optimism, we’re the best, the city on the hill.

In fact the great American task is self-scrutiny. Abraham Lincoln gave speeches about the civil war in which he said, in essence, “We’ve brought this on ourselves by enslaving Americans.” Obama’s speech was a diagnosis: “We have to take steps to rebuild our nation.” I’m not saying, “Hooray, he offered a tough, dark recognition of our reality.” I’m saying “Hooray” because he has recognised that the only way to save America is to confront it.

And she’s right. Saint Ronald of Blessed Memory and the recently dethroned Dubya in particular were both all about feel-good rhetoric that didn’t actually say anything substantive. Certainly there is something to be said for holding one’s head up high, squaring one’s shoulders, sitting tall in the saddle, whatever. But a person, or a nation, needs more than good posture.

I liked this comment by Steve Kraske of the Kansas City Star:

It was, in short, an address for these times.

To reach for anything more dramatic, anything more Martin Luther King-like given the proximity to the site of the preacher’s most quoted speech, would have cast the spotlight too much on Obama, rather than the dire fix the nation is in.

Obama detractors still mock him as The One or The Messiah, but the irony is that Obama presents himself in a far less messianic way than George W. Bush did. And the difference is that Obama can see a direction. He sees what needs to be done, and he’s telling us that we all need to work together to achieve substantial change. Bush was always thumping podiums and declaring that we must be “resolved,” but he was never entirely clear what we were supposed to be resolved about except to trust him. And need I say that many of these same detractors still genuflect at the mention of Saint Ronald?

There’s a lot of petty meanness going on on the Right today, but I think I’ll ignore it. Let them stew.

I’ve been at a chorus rehearsal, so I haven’t been watching television. So I get home, and the first thing on my mind is — What is the First Lady wearing? I want to see Michelle Obama in her ball gown. And of course, she is beautiful.

No More Mr. Nice Blog has an astute comment:

No one who’s been paying attention to Obama for the past two years should find [his inauguration speech] the least bit surprising — and yet, apparently because he didn’t come out in a dashiki and a bandolier saying “Kill whitey!” and “Off the pigs!,” the folks at National Review’s Corner are scratching their foreheads … and some of them are imagining that a crypto-Republican got elected by mistake.

Righties have no idea what we lefties think, because they never listen to us. They listen to the straw lefties that live in their own heads, and then they explain to each other what we think.

I don’t plan to live blog, exactly, but I’m watching the festivities on television while I work on other things. So I might toss in a loose comment now and then.

Oh, wait, there’s Michelle in her inauguration dress. She looks gorgeous.

Well, comment away.

Update: I didn’t watch either Bush inauguration on television. Can someone provide a comparison?

Update: “We are ready to lead once more.” With Shrub sitting there. Sweet.

Update: Enjoy.

Update: My favorite part of the speech:

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions – who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control – and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

This says so much that I’ve been saying and thinking the past several years.

It’s time for some reflection on the eve of a new chapter in American history.

Today there was another “the Obama Administration has already betrayed us” comment, followed by a “the Obama Administration will get punked by the Right” comment from our own scholar-philosopher, D.R . Add these to the pile of “the Obama Administration has already betrayed [choose as many as apply: progressive values, the Constitution, women, minorities, gays]” from the Left.

The Right, of course, already has fallen back to their early Clinton Administration battle lines. I understand the Weekly Standard had a Vince Foster retrospective a few days ago. In no time they’ll be assaulting the Obama Administration with all the subtlety of rabid wolverines.

I care about progressive issues as much as anybody, but right now I’m not in the mood to work myself into a lather about what might happen next. This may be because I’m exhausted with being in lathers about one thing or another these past eight years. Or it may be because the Zen training is finally kicking in. Or it may be my advancing age. Barack Obama will be (I believe I’m counting this correctly) the twelfth POTUS in my lifetime. I remember the elections and inaugurations of nine of the past eleven presidents. The one constant is that what president-elects say between election and inauguration has little bearing on what will actually happen in their administrations. People who are parsing Barack Obama’s every utterance for the Deeper Meaning should just stop and chill. Wait until the day after the inauguration to start parsing.

The whole nation is one big, inflamed wound right now. So Obama has been soothing and conciliatory in tone. Of course, the Left doesn’t like this, because we lefties (rightfully) are more in a mood for torches and pitchforks. I don’t think it would hurt us to be more dispassionate toward the departing Bushies, however. “Dispassionate” doesn’t mean “forgiveness,” nor does it mean “letting them get away with war crimes.” It just means inflamed emotions are not conducive to clear thinking and judicious action.

My impression is that Barack Obama has been extremely cautious when speaking of possible investigations of what went on the the Bush Administration mostly because the Bush Administration is still in office. And my guess is that Congress and eventually the Justice Department will get involved in the investigations of Bush II, but that Obama himself will stay in the background in these matters. However, once the Obama Administration begins it won’t hurt to push for investigations. I’m just saying there’s a huge difference in these statements:

• The Obama Administration should authorize investigations into the Bush Administration.
• The Obama Administration already has shown itself to be a pack of liars and cowards for not declaring clear intent to investigate the Bush Administration, even though such declaration would create a political firestorm that could limit the effectiveness of the Obama Administration’s first days in office.

Once again, I say we won’t know what the Obama Administration is going to do until it comes into existence and begins to do things. Then we’ll know. And even then, it may be several weeks before we start to see patterns and tendencies.

Regarding the Right — of course they’re going to continue their well-established pattern of using every lie and smear they can think of to discredit Barack Obama. And some of it probably will stick now and then. But it does seem to me the whole nation is in a very different place from where it was eight years ago, or even four years ago. I don’t think the same old tactics are going to work as well for the Right as in the past. I could be wrong; we’ll see.

Nothing is ever perfect. There are no unmixed blessing. Happy endings are not endings, but moments in time when beneficial forces come together, and as soon as they come together they begin to come apart again. Just because you saved he neighbor’s kid from drowning doesn’t mean the kid won’t grow up to be a serial killer. This is not pessimism, but realism. And I accept this. There’s a Zen saying, “the cup is already broken.” Every solid thing you see around you is just a temporary arrangement of molecules, including you. Do what you can do to make the world better, then let it go.

On the plus side, if you look at American history you see that the best administrations often have been preceded, or even bracketed, by the worst ones. Abraham Lincoln was preceded by James Buchanan and followed by Andrew Johnson, two bottom-of-the-barrel specimens. Franklin Roosevelt came after Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Maybe circumstance will be kind to America one more time, and give us a great president to follow possibly the all-time worst. We can hope. But at the moment, I’m not going to assume. We’ll see.