Flap Over Van Jones

Apparently for a number of weeks, Fox News commentator, Glenn Beck, has been ranting about Obama Administration hire (working in the White House) Van Jones. Mr. Jones, a well known West Coast activist, was "recruited" to work on "green jobs," which is something he has worked on, along with prison reform and environmental justice campaigns.

Glenn Beck, known as an extremely conservative commentator (in the style of Rush Limbaugh) picked up on several issues about Jones: the fact Jones called Republicans assholes, that he talked about white polluters and white environmentalists harming black communities, that Jones belonged to a group in the mid-1990s that advocated Marxist solutions to economic injustices, and maybe because Jones had been arrested in San Francisco in post-Rodney King riots and for the rioting and property destruction in Seattle during the World Trade Organization meetings in 1999 (Beck linked Jones with the anarchists who took "credit" for the Seattle riots).

Jones was hired by the White House, who, this weekend, distanced themselves from him by saying the hire did not go through the normal "vetting" process. It seems to me that an Administration that says it wants change should have taken more care to vet their hires. But more importantly, change also means not doing the usual Washington, DC shuffle. In other words, not ditching people when something about their pasts become controversial. Like so many other Administrations, particularly the Clinton one, loyalty to staff seems rather thin with the Obama Administration. This was a good moment, a teaching moment, for Obama, to talk about how people evolve in their thinking, how we tend to moderate our wild ideas as we grow older, but from those pasts, many good things can grow.

Prior to this weekend, Jones was a hero of many in the progressive movement, and seemingly could do no wrong among the newly minted environmental/social justice opinion makers. He was loved by everyone from Arianna Huffington to Rachel Maddow. He was feted by corporate American, seeming to fit their idea of having Van Jones around will fulfill environmental justice concerns. Check.

Now of course, since his resignation, attributed by the anti-Beck crowd as being hounded out of the White House, Jones stock is soaring. He is a martyr to the cause of being against Fox News and conservative political commentators.

And many in the Washington, DC establishment are wondering whether the "new" political atmosphere is being held accountable for comments made (and refuted) in your past. I think about Senator Ted Kennedy's eloquence when he talked about how none of us are defined by one incident, one or two moments in time. We are vastly more complicated than that. Jones should not be judged, least of all by a hyperbolic, bombastic commentator, for things he said or petitions he signed. He was hired by the Obama Administration because many many people in the business sector, including Meg Whitman, the former CEO (and Republican candidate for California governor) thinks Jones is a catalyst for change when it comes to jobs, the environment, and social justice.

On one list serv that I am a member, which caters to journalism, the emails have been flying over Glenn Beck's irresponsibility and how he was unjust to Jones.

Here is how I look at it. There is no doubt that Van Jones is a charismatic and charming leader of a many pronged movement to link social justice, environmental issues, and economic class. There have been many who have toiled in these trenches for decades before Van Jones swept onto the scene, and many who will continue the work long after Van Jones moves onto other issues. His leadership skills, however, are far far better off in the advocacy arena than the political milieu where caution and extraordinary care with words and actions are the norm. In the advocacy arena, hyperbole and pushing caution to the side are keys to success. In the White House, his particular skills, are stifled.

Also, if Jones is as a sophisticated leader as has been advertised, surely he can understand the delicacy of the Obama Administration. President Obama must, at all times, appear to be the president of all Americans (including Glenn Beck). While there is no doubt that issues of environmental justice (as in pollution affecting poorer communities) impact people of color far more than others, increasingly issues of desperate impacts are based on economic class rather than color of skin. Jones should not be held accountable for his prior advocacy comments, but on the other hand surely Jones knew his prior comments and beliefs would haunt the Obama Administration if and when someone cared to spend the time looking at them. A simple Google or Bing search will reveal Jones and his prior comments (as well as a view of Breaking the Chain a video done by Eugene anarchists about the Seattle WTO protests/riots will show an energetic Jones) and hopefully he knew someday, someone would check him out.

It's sad to see the bifurcation of advocacy and politics. In other words, that making the transition from advocacy work to politics is harder and harder. This difficulty in the transition also makes politics less interesting, more driven toward the cautious and easy resolution, rather than tackling large picture issues with zeal and energy. But, the silver lining to this is that perhaps people who are in advocacy will not be inclined to join the government, but rather be far more effective standing on the outside lobbing bombshells, pushing the slow moving political process to take heed or we'll take it to the streets.

The End of An Era

I grew up in a Republican family. Some of my earliest memories are my parents watching the Kennedy/Nixon debates in 1960. I remember each and every Kennedy drama and tragedy: The President's assassination, Bobby Kennedy's campaign (the iconic picture of him walking an Oregon beach with his English Springer spaniel), his murder, Ted Kennedy's horrific accident at Chappaquiddick, Ted's failed presidential bid in 1980, the various divorces, drug issues, crimes, and mishaps that followed the clan. For all their tabloid foibles, the Kennedys have been a part of America's destiny and purpose. They have managed to rise above their troubles and serve this country in ways other people only talk about. They have walked their talk.

It was the electrifying brothers, John, Bobby, and Ted who defined American politics for my generation. Their idealism, sense of hope, and noblesse oblige defined the parameters of how I think about public service. They, more than any other politician or national leader, defined the passion our generation has for this amazing land we call America.

No one in politics today, even Barack Obama, is able to fill those shoes, to provide Americans a sense of the possible, to advocate for people who have no one speaking for them. The Kennedys, all of them, saw things as they could be, not as they were.

Ted Kennedy, more than another member of that clan, has risen above his stuggles and found a path, a road, through the hearts and minds of Americans, a way to help each and every one of us: Medicare, Americans with Disabilities Act, Leave No Child Behind, and, in my world, more wilderness designations than I can count.

And so with Ted Kennedy's death, it is an end of an era. We have lost a man who had a compass, a sense of direction, of what is best about America. It is a loss.

Grumpy and Insecure Voters

Prior to his concession speech last Friday, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels stated the reason he thought he was losing was because Seattle voters were grumpy and insecure. Since his concession, there have been numerous articles analyzing what went wrong during Nickels eight years. Most commentators have been looking for Big Themes, such as Nickels intimidated and bullied too many people, he didn't know how to manage an increasingly complex city, or this blue collar boy didn't know how to manage a Microsoft suburb. I tend to think the reasons are far more complicated that a Grand Theory, but rather are a conglomeration of all those little annoying things that build up in you.

An accurate assessment of Mayor Nickels governing style goes something like this: he cobbled together an odd assortment of allies: environmentalists, developers, unions. Each feeding off each other. Developers deftly learned the language of environmentalists, talking about increasing densities in the neighborhoods and downtown as a way of mitigating suburban sprawl, an anathema to urbanista enviros. And the unions saw jobs in any sort of development. So, Mayor Nickels rode this coalition through the bling years, giving developers anything they asked for: tearing down ugly freeways, cute, European looking trolly cars slowly going from downtown to new development only two miles away, and permission to build cookie-cutter townhouses without adequate parking making Seattle's once unique neighborhoods homogenous collections of ugly and cheap condos.

Through all of this the Mayor rammed through revenue generators: photos at intersections intended to catch red light running cars, parking meters in neighborhood shopping areas (replacing free parking), fees on plastic and paper bags at grocery stores. And he arbitrarily closed neighborhood streets for "walking days," blithely towing cars that remained parked and telling people anxious on how to get to work to "chill." He reduced traffic lanes with street diets, forgot to plow the streets during snowstorms but then gave himself a "B," for his management. Figuring out garbage became stressful and he empowered garbagemen to riffle through your cans to decide whether you got a ticket for forgetting to compost the banana peel. But big business and landlords became exempt from all the rules. Travel to and from downtown became laborious. Seattle employees became arrogant. And the daily lives of everyone got slightly more difficult every day.

While governing can be sexy if you get to ponder all the big questions, it's really the little things that build up in people's minds. They remember the day they got a parking ticket in an area that was once free, or a city employee hung up on them, or when the Mayor tells everyone to ride bikes but says he can't because he has a security detail or when his park department decided to ban beach fires because of bogus environmental reasons. It's the slights that add up. And finally tumbled out in a grumpy vote.

Of course, now the pundits are wondering, like the morning after a drinking binge, what did we do? We now have two political newbees running for office. Hopefully they spend a little bit of time thinking just how they will manage the little things. Will they rein in the city's Department of Transportation that seems to think a "listening" session is merely a show and tell then cram a decision down citizen's throats? Will they figure out how to stop powerful stakeholders from controlling decisions at City Hall? Will they stop trying to figure out how to ding people for revenue at every moment? Will they find balance between government intervention and government intrusion?

It's a tough job. Probably the toughest in electoral politics. It's a balance between policy making and managing, unique in management structure. In the end, Mayor Nickels showed some of his true colors, gracious and magnanimous to his opponents, apologetic for the snowplows (again). But did he really understand that part of the tsunami that swept him out of office had to do with so many little things?

Finger Pointing in Washington, DC, Oh My!

Instead of addressing the surge in foreclosures, the greed filled credit card industry, the exploding health care costs that are bankrupting Medicare and many personal finances, or even the mess in Afghanistan, our "for change" politicians seem to me indulging in their favorite activity in Washington, DC.  Finger pointing.

The targets this time are Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who for years, was the ranking minority leader on the House Intelligence Committee.  During the Bush Administration's in-house debates about the use of "enhanced interrogation methods," (read: torture) then Congresswoman Pelosi was briefed by CIA administrators on the capture and interrogations of several al Qaeda masterminds.  

The Republicans, eager to gain some toehold into the Democratic steamroller, leapt onto this information, claiming Speaker Pelosi is a hypocrite.  How can she call for prosecutions or a truth commission on the Bush Administration's use of torture when she knew about it herself.

Pelosi, aware of this problem, is now pointing fingers at the CIA, claiming the briefings were misleading.  Congress, she said yesterday, was misled.

And today, the Obama appointee to head the CIA, Leon Panetta, said there was no misleading by his agency.

Stop this madness!

Show me one Congressman, heck, one politician who isn't a hypocrite.  Anyone?

So, what really should be happening here is Speaker Pelosi should admit she was briefed, at the time the briefings were confidential, she expressed her concerns about the interrogation methods, and now it's time for us to find out what actually happened and move on.

But this game, this finger pointing.  What a waste of time.  While we're focused on this, thousands of people lost their homes to foreclosures.  Millions are out of work.  People are struggling trying to find health care.

And This Is Important Because?

For the past several days there have been skirmishes by leaders in the Democratic Party over Rush Limbaugh, the polarizing talk show host who recently said he hopes President Obama fails.

Over the weekend, Mr. Limbaugh spoke, as he does almost every year, to a convention of conservatives and on the Sunday morning talk shows, the President's chief of staff announced that Limbaugh was effectively, the leader of the Republican Party.  

While it seems to me the recently GOP has been bereft of ideas, for instance dredging up the old ideas of more tax cuts rather than spending money to stimulate the economy, I believe most Americans other than Limbaugh's ditto-heads generally agree that the Republicans are clueless right now.  That is, unless the White House knows something we don't know.  So it seems that trying to pull the plugs on the GOP life support by closely allying them with Rush Limbaugh is a waste of time.

Memories are short. I think the White House may be forgetting that only a few years ago, the Republicans were anxious to dance on the Democrat's graves.  This kind of behavior really isn't, I don't think, the change American's voted for in November.

Besides, we only have a vibrant democracy when there are thoughtful and energized opponents.  That's what we want.  Not feeding Rush Limbaugh's enormous appetite for attention.