Hello and welcome to my blog!
Throughout this semester, I will be collecting some of my best works in and out of the classroom with hopes of creating an online portfolio. Please feel free to give me any feedback and suggestions. Enjoy!
Maybe it will be the missing piece to journalism you’ve been searching for. Well, one can dream…
I was in preschool when I met Marissa. She was quirky, with big bows in her brown hair, freckles across her nose, and the pickiest palate known to childkind. But we were inseparable. And with daily play dates, carpools and dance lessons, our moms became best friends too.
Marissa’s mom, Rhonda, was like a second mom to me. She’d make me after school snacks, put BandAids on my scraped knees, and drive me home in the middle of the night when I changed my mind about the sleepover. She watched me grow from a toddler to a teenager, and didn’t miss a milestone.
That’s why I remember her so vividly. I remember her pointy nose that swooped upwards like Samantha’s in Bewitched. I remember her healthy cookbooks, tiny frame, and big curly hair. And her closet—filled with a hundred high heels—could never be forgotten.
Rhonda was 45, strong, obsessively healthy, and, to this day, a medical anomaly. She died of lung cancer on June 20, 2002, but never smoked a day in her life. She was that .001 percent.
I remember our visits to Rhonda’s house became more frequent the months before she passed. I’ll never forget our last visit though. Mom went straight into the kitchen to speak with the Hospice nurse before sitting in bed with Rhonda. Marissa and I played in the backyard before running in the house and climbing onto the bed. We sat criss-cross-apple-sauce, next to our mothers, singing Green Day.
Rhonda was bald, skeletal, and frail. Her wig laid on the night table, next to a dozen orange pill bottles.
We said goodbye, gave Rhonda a kiss, and left to run errands.
On that miserably hot, Phoenix summer day, Mom dropped her cell phone in the grocery store parking lot. It shattered on the asphalt as she crouched to the floor and put her face in her hands. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as Dad helped her into the car.
“Get in the backseat and don’t say a word,” he said to me.
But I knew something was wrong. I had never seen Mom cry before. “Who called you?” I asked.
No answer.
“Mom? Please….what’s wrong?”
Mom ignored me. She stared blankly out the window until we pulled into our driveway. She ran into the house as dad and I watched her from the car.
Dad turned around and said, “Rhonda died.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry sweetheart,” he said.
“No, Dad. I was just there two hours ago. She was there. We sang Green Day together. We sang the Time of Your Life!”
My dad looked at me until it finally registered.
“How?” I asked.
“The cancer caused her body to stop functioning properly,” Dad said softly. “She couldn’t fight it anymore.”
“Why didn’t God help her?”
My dad’s eyes filled with tears as he watched me struggle to understand what had just happened.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes bad things happen to good people.”
Dad left to go help Mom inside the house. I sat in the car. Confused, angry, sad, and then confused again.
That was the moment that I lost faith in a God. I felt betrayed and debilitated. If God existed, he wouldn’t have let Rhonda died. He wouldn’t have let Marissa, a 12-year-old girl, grow up without a mother. He wouldn’t have stripped my mom of her best friend.
But even after Rhonda was gone, Marissa and I remained best friends. Mom made us snacks after school, took us to dance lessons, and hosted our birthday parties. She did—and still does—everything to make sure Marissa grows up with a mother figure.
The journey to discovering that (I believe) there is no God was hard. There’s no other word to describe it. A 12-year-old girl goes through enough changes and mood swings as it is. To throw my first experience with death into the mix was…hard.
Eight years later, I still believe there is no God. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. The love of my family is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won a huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.
Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my friends and family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. That’s it.
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, friends, people, love, truth, beauty, chocolate, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.
I thank Rhonda for helping me learn that.
*RIP Rhonda. I love you.
We’re taught as children that history repeats itself. With that warning in mind, the latest squabble between the Obama administration and Hamid Karzai evokes a similar disagreement between the American government and its Vietnamese partner of the early 1960s, Ngo Dinh Diem. And as we compare U.S. involvement in Afghanistan today to its past relations in Vietnam, we realize that history might repeat itself 47 years later.
Some background: U.S. relations with Vietnam in the ‘60s were violent and ultimately disastrous. Diem became the president of South Vietnam in 1954 with American backing. The United States opposed the communization of Vietnam and ended up adopting Diem as our ally in the anti-communist movement.
It was an uneasy alliance though. Diem had an agenda quite different from that pursued by Washington. Diem was secretive, authoritarian, and corrupt. He had carefully built a network of power from his base of Catholic supporters, narcotics dealers, and local criminals. Diem had control of the prostitution and bar industry. His spy network was thorough and terrifying to the local populace.
This was a guy who kept a working casino on the top floor of his presidential palace. He was a thug. And he had way too much power.
Ultimately, President Kennedy decided that the United States could better win over Vietnam by replacing Diem. That’s when the U.S. withdrew support for Diem and assassinated him. The result, unfortunately, was further destabilization because there were no clear successors. Diem’s assassination led to one of America’s longest wars (a distinction Afghanistan has already exceeded). The problem was that two arguments were used against withdrawal:
One was that opposing the spread of communism was vital to America’s survival. The second was that we already had so much investment that we could not walk away.
Diem VS Karzai
Flashfoward 40 years: Major American involvement in Afghanistan came in response to 9/11 and the desire to end terrorism. In the process, Karzai became president and was a great public relations success in the United States. However, corruption has been a major theme in Afghan opposition to Karzai, and the United States has publicly and privately implored him to clean up his regime’s act. Karzai has responded to pressure most recently by creating a confrontation with Washington, accusing “foreigners” (aka Americans) of causing all his problems, such as rigging the elections last year that returned him to office.
Should the United States decide to dump Karzai, would the result be the same? I don’t know. But it’s clear that there is no obvious successor in a country that traditionally opposes central governmental control. And if that red flag isn’t bright enough, the analogy becomes even scarier when you consider the resemblance between today’s arguments against withdrawal from Afghanistan:
One is that opposing the spread of terrorism is vital to America’s survival. The second was that we already had so much investment that we could not walk away (no substitution needed). Sound familiar?
If I were Obama, I’d think twice before removing Karzai. But I guess we’ll see if our President learned the history proverb this May.
Layoffs, buyouts and staffing cuts had already become standard operating procedure for the news industry well before the recession. Month-to-month job losses were running in the thousands. The recession has only amplified the impact.
News media companies are in the throes of a systemic shift. They are focused on trying to keep up with the needs of a digitally savvy consumer and adapt to new market conditions that resist the traditional ad-driven mold.
Photograph courtesy REUTERS
In spite of this journalists aren’t dying; they’re relocating.
Some blame the Internet and bloggers, and that’s certainly a part of the story. All that consolidation and mindless deregulation, condemned us to less real news, less serious political coverage, less diversity of opinion, less investigative journalism and fewer jobs for journalists. But think tanks, might also be to blame.
Take, for instance, three of the most influential policy institutes in the U.S.: the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, and the Brookings Institution.
Regardless of their partisan (or falsely claimed lack thereof) the presence of journalists on the payrolls of think tanks is crucial to their clout, lending them the “proof” of neutral, nonpartisan news organizations. Since its founding in 1916, Brookings has played host to a string of reporters from major US news publications: Paul Blustein, a former staff writer at the Washington Post, now bylines for Brookings; former White House Press Secretary and NBC reporter Ron Nessen became Vice President of Communications; Stephen G. Smith, former editor of U.S. News and World and the National Journal (among many others) blogged for Brookings, while in residence.
As newspapers close foreign bureaus and shrink newsrooms, think tanks like Brookings have moved to fill the void in new and old media. They are investing in new media such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook. And while tightfisted newspaper publishers may be less than generous with book leave, think tanks offer a place to work on long-form journalism free of daily deadline pressure.
Journalists could join Brookings without being branded. “Brookings eschews ideology and emphasizes quality, independence and impact,” the Institute’s Senior Fellow, Thomas Mann, told me. “While the center of gravity among scholars here is center-left, we have Republicans and conservatives on staff.”
But Brookings isn’t the only place where renowned newspaper and magazine reporters and editors have set up shop. AEI Press has published two books written and edited by visiting fellow Jon Entine. Ken McIntyre, a newspaperman for more than 25 years, is a fellow in Media and Public Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
And why wouldn’t they? According to Matthew Streit, Director, Broadcast Services at The Heritage Foundation, a think tank journalist can make upwards of $87,000 a year, not to mention travel stipends and office space. That salary and deadline sovereignty is hard to come by at any newspaper or magazine these days.
When asked what he believes his role in Washington is, Mann responded, “to try to shed some light on our democratic institutions and policymaking processes and seek ways of improving them.”
Is journalism turning into corporate news? Photograph courtesy flickr/hiram7
With an answer like that, surely, most people would question the ethics and objectivity of think tank journalism. After all, AEI and Heritage both proudly proclaim their conservative public philosophies and Brookings leans to the left—even though they may hide behind “nonpartisan” mission statements.
But how is that any different from the New York Times, which, like Brookings, has a liberal slant. Or the Wall Street Journal, which shares AEI’s conservative sentiments. Or (for the sake of a complete trifecta) the Washington Post, which reflects the Heritage Foundation’s tone.
Think tanks, even “centrist” ones, can’t truly offer the same independence that newspapers have. We’ve learned from David Frum, that donors are behind the steering wheel, not journalism morals for objectivity. But you’re lying to yourself if you believe newspapers or television stations don’t have a slant of their own.
By publishing through a think tank, journalists might be able to hold on to what’s left of reporting. They are given time, money, and space to do research and writing. They are able to reach an influential constituency and audience that already exist for them.
Whether identified with the left or right, AEI, Brookings and the Heritage Foundation are dedicated to disseminating their research and recommendations to the policy-makers, and to the news media, influential opinion leaders, interested organizations, and members of the public. Indeed, underlying all of the misleading mission statements and fluffy PR lays a common goal.
And at the end of the day, isn’t that the goal of journalism too?
Photograph courtesy flickr/David_USA
For a moment I was speechless, but now I’m thinking:
1) He probably has trouble getting through airport security.
2) I’m going to guess he’s not a side sleeper.
3) Why, oh why, on Earth would he do this??
Jerry Brown is running for governor again. And he’ll probably win.
Why? Because America likes to “go green” and recycle. Apparently, that goes for politicians as well.
During its history, the United States has seen many families who have repeatedly produced notable politicians. Historic families—the Kennedy, the Longs, the Lees, the Roosevelts, the Daleys, the Muhlenbergs, the Tafts, the Clintons and the Bushes—have had a significant impact on U.S. politics.
We don’t live in a democracy; we live in a familiocracy. That’s why Brown has a real chance of winning over Meg Whitman—even though she has a brilliant campaign manager, a massive budget and an impressive résumé.
Think about it. Kennedy family member Maria Shriver’s husband Arnold Schwarzenegger is now governor of California. Two Udalls currently serve in Congress. So, why shouldn’t 72-year-old Brown, whose father and sister were both politicians, win the race?
Photograph courtesy flickr/ChrisPizzello
It doesn’t matter that he is now bald, all Zenned-out and inconsistent. It doesn’t matter that California, the world’s eighth largest economy, is “borderline ungovernable.” Because Americans like familiarity and they’re going to vote for the sequel over the big-budget new release.
Still, why is Brown doing this? Based on his track record, it’s because of his obsessive mission to spend his life solving the deepest political puzzles.
Brown seems unafraid to do things, which he knows will work, but may seem unpopular at first. And that’s what it’s going to take to govern California: political courage. It may take Brown ramming through legislation, which undoes certain voter-initiatives that have proven disastrous for California. And maybe an overhaul of the whole voter-initiative process is in order.
I still assert the main reason why California is in such bad financial shape is the voters keep voting for bond measures like they’re free money. By law, you can’t raise property taxes, but voters, through a screwy ballot-initiative process, can mandate expensive programs without the means to pay for them. That needs to stop. And that’s where Brown might be able to excel.
With his mix of oddity and pragmatism, Brown might be uniquely suited to tangle with the state’s contradictions. But the real reason why he’ll win is because he’s part of a political family.
He’s just milking his pedigree for all its worth.
Photograph courtesy of newyork.metromix.com
Google “local restaurants” and it is sure to return a dozen or more sites that host reader’s reviews of restaurants. The likes of Yelp, Citysearch, and ActiveDiner, all claim to allow patrons to give a critique of a particular establishment. That’s fine, except for the fact that the majority of reviews left on these sites are from people directly involved in the restaurant’s well being, or their competition. That is why the majority of the reviews are all five-star fluff talking about how amazing a particular restaurant is. And if it’s not the manager’s son writing a rave review, it’s someone who is upset because she didn’t order chives on the baked potato, and it had chives. This bipolar combination of opinions leads most people to think that a particular restaurant is the worst serviced restaurant serving the greatest local barbeque. I am tired of trying to get a heads up on a new restaurant and being bombarded with impractical reviews.
It appears that consumers no longer feel the need to obtain their opinions from the authority of a paid newspaper critic. Due to the advent of social media and the blogosphere, opinion has been democratized and often shrunk to 140 characters or less.
Pity the poor restaurant critic. Sure, they dine every night at the finest tables, someone else picks up the tab, and they call it work. But imagine being in their shoes, working in the age of yelp.com and where everyone has a food blog telling you about where they had dinner last night. Wouldn’t you feel a little bit like your profession is just staring into the abyss, waiting for someone to give you a push? (I’m a print journalism student about to graduate. I know the feeling well.)
Has criticism really changed, or is it just the medium we use to get it that has changed? I believe that newspaper critics have obtained their position because they are both experts in the field and know how to write, while bloggers tend to be well versed in one or the other, but not both. What makes bloggers different is that the power has been shifted from a one-directional, static monologue to a dynamic and democratic conversation, where “good” bloggers (well versed in the topic and writing) will continue to attract readers.
Bloggers are succeeding not only because readers are getting the information out immediately, but also because they are forming a personal relationship with the author that supersedes perfection in either knowledge or grammar. Building the kind of relationship you need for a conversation does not rely solely on ‘expertise’, but also on the blogger’s honesty, vulnerability and curiosity.
It is not the newspaper critic that is dying, but rather newspapers, a style of media that adheres to a one directional communication. Maybe “dying” is a poor term, but let’s just say that the masses want to be heard, want to be empowered and want to share their own personal brand of knowledge.
The problem is, a detailed and complete apprehension of food requires expertise and passion. Appreciation without knowledge may be pleasurable, but it is shallow. Apprehension without appreciation may be detailed, but it ignores our humanity and the truth of emotion.
The Brinker International Restaurant Chain. Photograph courtesy of foodlion.com
To all of you potential reviewers out there, please start being critical of the restaurants you write about. I have no problem if you feel a restaurant is deserving of a five star ranking, I just ask that your comment contain more than “Best Place Ever!!”. Feel free to state why you believe a particular restaurant is the Garden of Eden of hamburgers or the Holy Grail of grilled chicken. It’s hard enough to seek out great local small restaurants that don’t have a Brinker chain-sized marketing budget, so don’t add to the difficulty by posting restaurant critiques that are shorter than Twitter post.
Though the best restaurant critics have entertained and transported us through their descriptions and narratives, people read restaurant reviews because they want to know if they should eat there, what dishes are good, and how much it’ll cost. It seems if you just assembled a chart with that information on it, maybe with a dash of snark, most people would be perfectly content.
Forgive me, for wanting something more.
The reason why the food critic will not die is because they usually bring thoughtfulness and perspective to their readers. A good critic challenges our interpretations and assumptions and creates a larger dialogue not just of the food, but of the experience. We invest in them a sense of authority that—in the age of meaningless Tweets, status updates, and blogspot posts—we appreciate.
I cringe when I picture what my house is going to look like in twenty years. I’m going to have Apple chargers popping out from every wall socket. I will have no CDs, DVDs, or pictures on my bookshelves. And I certainly won’t have a collection of books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries on display. My coffee table won’t have beautiful, glossy magazines and art books. Instead, it will have a 20-inch colorific screen of some sort that people can flick, drag and click with their dirty fingers in my living room.
One day, I’ll be able to thank Steve Jobs and Apple for sucking everything I love and everything I own into an all-inclusive device. My ihouse will drown in a black, silver and white motif, barren of all things tangible.
Steve Jobs and his new ipad? Photograph courtesy flickr/jbaldzer.
The recently announced Apple iPad is supposed to be a new home to my favorite TV shows, movies, photos, YouTube videos, documents, books, applications and more. Publishers are hoping that it can offer the same magic for the print world and make the iPad home to my favorite news apps as well. So, is digital journalism suddenly saleable?
It’s very possible that people will jump on the bandwagon and buy the newspaper applications. It’ll be a quick fad where people try to get down with the Apple geekery and read the Times. But the miniscule iPad revenue sources aren’t going to make up for the shortfall of seven years of constant print erosion.
Many have defined the problem—people are abandoning old media for new media in droves—but nobody has come close to figuring out the business model that offers the rich experience advertisers will pay a premium to be part and ensures the range and quality of news and periodical content.
Jobs thinks he figured it out. But I can’t understand how the iPad is going to do anything more for journalism than the Mac, the iPhone and the iPod touch already failed to do. We have plenty of gadgets that lead us to the New York Times website. Some fit in our back pocket, others fit in our backpack; some have five-hour battery lives, others have 10 or 24; some have incalculable hard drives, some can’t save a PowerPoint. But that hasn’t helped journalism.
Even with our shiny Mac toys, thousands of journalists are getting laid off, hundreds of publications are folding and word counts have been cut in half in order to look pretty on my tiny computer screen and iphone.
Apple’s new device is just another distribution platform for words, pictures, videos and data, just like PCs, smartphones and print publications. Recreating a print experience on another device is not going to solve the economic crisis news finds itself in: Google will still be more efficient at selling advertising and will still point readers to free content.
Can this save the journalism industry? I don’t know. Did the iPod save the music industry? Did the Apple TV save the broadcast TV industry? Did the iPhone save the telecom industry? Not really. They all just made more money for Apple.
Apple's plan for the future. Photograph courtesy flickr/svenwerk
The future of news is about distributing content as widely as possible and monetizing, not just content, but relationships. Devices will be a big part of that, but they’re not the answer.
There is something to be said for tangibility. Soon enough, Jobs will have taken away all of my favorite things: the smell of old library books, my scrapbooking hobby and my desire to be a long form feature writer.
Next time Jobs wins an Academy Award for a Pixar film, let’s just give him a PDF he can upload on his isomething. And when he’s honored for saving journalism, one news app at a time, let’s send him an e-card that says Congrats. No need to display a memento on your mantelpiece when you can digitize it, compress it and keep it in your pocket, right?
“It’s even trickier for gay people,” Marty Bracciotti, an analyst for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, said. He was referring to the plight of same-sex couples who are trying to obtain, and then maintain, health insurance.
Marty in downtown L.A. Starbucks
Bracciotti has lived with his partner, Joseph Selph, for 26 years. They have cushy jobs that come with health insurance, own a large Glendale home together and have not felt shock and woe of this dwindling economy.
“It’s because I’m frugal,” Bracciotti, 55, said. “Plus, I work for the government so you’re less prone to layoffs.”
For 17 years, Bracciotti has fed California judges and executive management with policy information and statistics. He’s well versed on court operations and well aware of the mounting foreclosure filings that sweep through his courthouse in Downtown Los Angeles.
“But everyone is one layoff away from losing their health insurance,” Bracciotti said, sipping his afternoon espresso in Starbucks. “The issue is that if [Joseph] lost his job, the Federal Government won’t recognize him as my partner.”
The Domestic Partnership Benefits Act would grant same-sex partners of federal workers the same health and pension benefits as spouses of heterosexual government employees. In June 2009 President Obama announced his support for the Act, which he noted as “crucial legislation.” Bracciotti expects Obama will divulge new plans to fulfill his campaign pledges regarding equality for gays under the law in his State of the Union address.
“There’s not one person out there that’s a magician that can make everybody’s world perfect,” Bracciotti said. “I think [Obama has] done a great job with what he’s inherited. But, he has lost focus of the people and he’s so busy wrapped up in policy.”
Bracciotti still stands by his vote for Obama, but he wants to see Obama take the time to recalibrate his message and redirect his focus. And with Rep. Scott Brown’s recent Senate seat victory, Bracciotti believes things are going to shape up.
“It’s a wake up call,” he said. “I want to see some clarity, simplicity and I want to see the Republicans fold in.”
Bracciotti especially wants to see changes to the proposed health plan.
“When I went to work for the government, one of the main things I looked for was not, ‘Oh, this is the best job,’ but ‘Oh, they’ve got health insurance,’” Bracciotti said. “That should not be the driving force. You should be aiming your skills at what they’re best suited for, not for health coverage.”
I’m a full-time University of Southern California student. I even have a cardinal and gold sweatshirt and a ‘SC shot glass to prove it. But I’m a Trojan anomaly. I hate football.
To me, it’s a pointless game—a lot of big guys bashing into each other, moving the ball a couple feet before making a dog pile. And I certainly couldn’t care less that Pete Carroll is moving to Seattle. All I really know about Carroll is that he has cajones, according to the popular game-day chant. And apparently he’s made a big, ballsy move that now has everyone all riled up.
According to Google (because I sure as hell didn’t know) Carroll won seven Pac-10 titles in nine years, one national college football championship entirely, split another with LSU, barely lost a third, and in the process turned USC back into a national pigskin power.
Photograph courtesy flickr/kwillis
And now, armed with Heisman Trophy winners and NFL first-round draft choices, he’s leaving the Trojans to take over the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL.
Let me put this in terms of basketball—a sport that I actually understand. Do you remember when Michael Jordan retired from the NBA to take a whack at baseball for a few years? It was getting tough for Jordan to keep living up to expectations, plus those nasty gambling rumors were starting to taint his reputation. A couple years away from the NBA took care of both of those.
The same could be true for Carroll. He gets out of USC before the NCAA gavel falls on the alleged booster scandals and he leaves with his reputation as a championship college coach intact.
I assume that’s only part of the appeal. The Seahawks offered him control of the football operation by naming him head coach and president of the franchise. Seattle also enticed him with Paul Allen, a team owner with boundless resources, a first-class stadium and training facility and a VIP parking spot.
I don’t think it’s about the money, though. What’s another $2 million? I think it’s about the chance to disprove the theory that he’s more suited for college football. After all, this will be Carroll’s third stint as a head coach in the NFL. He went 33-31 in four seasons with the New York Jets and New England Patriots. Whatever those numbers stand for, I know they aren’t good.
From what I understand, the Seahawks are in a weak division, with a substantial losing streak and a half-injured team. Carroll can be a hero. He can bring his leadership, a change in attitude and someone who the fans can get excited about.
So why wouldn’t the 58-year-old San Francisco native take the offer? He still gets to keep his West Coast lifestyle. Granted, he’ll have to buy an umbrella and roll up the windows. But I’m sure he’ll be able to afford that with his new $35 million contract.
Wednesday’s State of the Union address couldn’t come at a better time. President Obama will report on the country’s condition, and will outline his administration’s agenda for the coming year.
The last twelve months have been marked by enormous economic and political turbulence, with wide swings in the nation’s mood: From the giddiness of Inauguration Day and the first 100 days to the anger and dissatisfaction displayed in town hall meetings, culminating in rejection at the polls this week in Massachusetts.
As Obama acknowledged last week, the Democrats have been rushing through legislation, most notably health care reform. They were too wrapped up in policy and lost focus on what the people wanted.
It seems they also forgot about Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat and never seriously considered the possibility of a Republican winning it. After all, Massachusetts is the bluest of the blue and that seat was one of the most Democratic seats in the Senate.
Let’s thank the voters of Massachusetts for restoring a ray of hope that the left-wing juggernaut can be slowed long enough to restore balance. Tuesday’s election of Republican Scott Brown was an excellent thing.
A Ted Kennedy in the making...Photograph courtesy flick/lynnrockets
Brown, the New England Moderate, is pro-abortion and thinks all Americans should receive healthcare coverage. If he stays true to his beliefs, it’s possible that he can make being a moderate (a dying breed in the Senate) cool again. And the hope is that we’ll start to see more cooperation between the parties than we have all year.
That is the most interesting part. Three-fourths of those laudable Massachusetts voters said they wanted Brown to work with Democrats to get Republican ideas into legislation, according to a Washington Post survey. It wasn’t about honoring Kennedy in the voting booth—it was about reacting to their own fears and concerns. It was a referendum on bad policies, not a bad candidate. Most of all, it was a call for Congressional cooperation and a rebalance of power.
This makes Brown the 41st Republican in the 100-member Senate, which means the Republicans now have enough votes to block Obama’s health care legislation. The Democrats lost the supermajority that kept them filibuster-proof, not to mention weak with compromise and void of leadership. Now, more than ever, both parties will have to come to the table with ideas for solving our common problems.
Obama needs to respond to those who questioned, a year ago, the scale of his ambitions, who suggested that the American political system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Obama labeled them cynics, accusing them of failing “to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them.” But who is off balance now? The cynics or his young administration?
We need to see if Obama can recapture the magic that made the nation believe that it could come together to achieve great things. Is he, one year later, up to the bold words he spoke at the Capitol or will he treat us to a plan B?
