Marty Manley on economics, politics, technology, and culture

Elections

Will Obama Ask Biden and Clinton to Swap Jobs?

Should the President ask his VP and his Secretary of State to trade jobs? This is one of those too-delicious by half ideas that builds up as beltway buzz and becomes the stuff of gossip columns and talk show chatter. Increasingly however, the idea is not crazy if Obama gets the timing right. It cannot cannot [...]

A Whitman Deer in California Headlights

It’s a good time to live in the Bay Area. Not only do you get to watch the Giants absolutely pulverize the Texas Rangers, but you get to watch Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina spend a great deal of their own money on vanity campaigns. Politico reports that as of last week, Meg has spent [...]

Did Susan B. Anthony and Abraham Lincoln elect Barack Obama?

In the earliest days of the United States, only white protestant men with property were eligible to vote, Since that time however, the US has steadily, if unevenly, advanced the cause of suffrage. Has it mattered? To find out, ask how the 2008 presidential election would have turned out if only white men had voted. [...]

The revolution will not be televised. It will be Tweeted, Blogged, and YouTubed.

Iran has crossed into promising and dangerous ground – that moment when  political mobilization creates the possibility that chaos will give birth to progress or collapse in repression. Politics becomes a real and serious struggle as  history either leaps forward or falls back based on the cumulative impact of thousands of  people who cannot know [...]

Redesigning California

Update: our local public radio station broadcast the two minute version of this post. Listen to it here. Most clichés about California are true: we are both America’s most urban state and its most agricultural. We are home to more national parks, more immigrants, and a better public university than any other state. We have [...]

Makin' Sausage

Those who consider Obama's budget will naturally keep in mind Otto von Bismarck's famous warning to lovers of laws and sausages not to watch either being made. We need some high quality sausage making here because, as foreshadowed in his speech to Congress, Obama's budget is audacious. Obama runs the deficit up to $1.5 trillion [...]

Puttin' on Heirs: Why I'm Not Voting for Malia Obama

IInherited political office reeks of the royalism  that drove our forefathers to revolution. As in 1829, we saw off a Presidential son this week — although unlike George II, John Quincy Adams did not chopper off with Pops. Instead he served in Congress — the only former president ever to do so. Until today, the [...]

Prose When Poetry Was Due

What a sight! More than a million jubilant people jammed into the National Mall to watch history pivot. Hundreds of millions more watched or listened to Obama from all over the world. Obama delivered a fine inaugural address but oddly, he chose prose over poetry. Instead of words to lift souls, we got a sermon [...]

Dog Whistling

Politicians like dog metaphors. They reject an argument with "that dog won't hunt" and dismiss one  with "I got no dog in that fight". Enemies have canine ancestry (at least on their mother's side). When they create a crisis to deflect criticism, they "wag the dog" (after the DeNiro film about a President who goes [...]

The Obama Transition: Missing Three Pieces

Your weaknesses will slow you down, but your strengths can kill you. You know your weaknesses, and you tend to compensate. But your strengths cast  shadows — blind spots that create real vulnerability. Smart leaders know this. They build leadership teams that help check their blind spots. There is early evidence that Barrack Obama is [...]

The New Yorker's Finest Political Issue Ever

The New Yorker has produced an issue worthy of our recent election. If you do not own the November 17 issue, run, do not walk, to get one.  Or at least read it online — it is an amazing piece of journalism. This election issue contains four of the best articles and another four commentaries [...]

Five Myths About Obama's Election

I live in Oakland, which has long favored an especially breathless form of mythological political thinking. We all but invented Bush Derangement Syndrome and don't at all mind appearing in public as a parody of ourselves. Tonight the always amusing marquee on the Grand Lake Theater down the street, reads "We cannot wait until January [...]

"Yes, We Can" vs. "No, You Can't"

Barrack Obama has built his brand on the audacity of hope. Nothing symbolized his campaign like the mantra he used beautifully in his victory speech: yes, we can. Coming on the heels of the destructive, hyper-partisan Bush years that had tarnished America, "yes, we can" was an inspired breath of fresh air. But even for [...]

Sweeeet……….Now What??

What do Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Nevada, New Mexico, and Virginia all have in common? They all voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. But each of them voted for Obama in Tuesday’s landslide. A majority of voters in the state that started the Civil War, the state that sent Jesse Helms [...]

Show Time….

Veterans returning from World War II in 1945-6 faced tough times. In this environment came the jump blues classic, "Choo Choo Ch’Boogie" by Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five. The song was a lyrical and musical smash: You reach your destination, but alas and alack! You need some compensation to get back in the black [...]

Taking Power — A Campaign Like No Other

Sarah Palin once ventured that the mayor of Wassilla and a community organizer were about the same thing. She is about to learn otherwise and is unlikely to enjoy the lesson. Barring catastrophe, Barack Obama is our next President. Obviously a tarnished Republican brand, a very unpopular incumbent, and an awful economy helped. At one [...]

The Really Right Answer is "What if he is Muslim?"

If you missed Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, take a moment to watch it here. It shows why Powell remains one of America’s few popular Republicans. The most moving part of his comments — insufficiently discussed in the press — was a story he told about five minutes into his remarks. He reflected on [...]

Obamanos

Intrade’s state by state political map looks like this. Click on a state to see the current trading price for a futures contract betting on either McCain or Obama in that state. Allowing for uncleared trades, the price reflects the odds of success for each candidate. Geeks should play with the black buttons before reading [...]

Palin by Comparison

Democrats and our media have now intercepted the mother of all Hail Mary passes. As George Bush learned when he selected Dan Quayle, it is a bad sign when the most thoughtful conservative commentators deride your Republican Vice President pick (see David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, David Gergen). And although it’s good news for Saturday Night [...]

Republican Pros Analyze the McCain Campaign: "Stupid" "Incoherent" "Ridiculous" "Impulsive" "Erratic" "Malpractice"

Democratic fantasies of electoral landslide are becoming mainstream Republican predictions. Following the lead of David Brooks, who last week termed Palin a "cancer on the McCain campaign" the men of the right piled on over the weekend. Watch Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins predict an Obama landslide and Wall St. Journal editorial writer Paul Gigot, [...]