Pardoning a real turkey

In Thanksgiving Tradition, Bush Pardons Scooter Libby In Giant Turkey Costume

The National Security dream team

More roll-outs for the Obama Administration expected next week:

[Current Defense Secretary Robert Gates] is expected to be rolled out immediately after the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend as part of a larger national security team expected to include Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, as Secretary of State; Marine Gen. Jim Jones (Ret.) as National Security Adviser; Admiral Dennis Blair (Ret.) as Director of National Intelligence; and Dr. Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

This according to ABC News. OK, so keeping Gates on for another year, as ABC reports, may not be a dream, but am I the only politigeek who is thrilled by the notion of Susan Rice stepping into the United Nations Building as our next ambassador? We can at least agree, can we not, that she sure beats the hell out of John "Lose-10-stories-of-the-building-and-it-wouldn't-make-a-difference" Bolton.

Starting to remember what quality leadership feels like? Me too. =D

Prop. 8 as the death-rattle of religious paternalism

Rather than a show of strength by the religious right, the entire movement behind Prop. 8 may very well be a last strike by a disintegrating power structure. So says author Richard Rodriguez in this great interview on Salon. (As further evidence of the disintegration of that structure, I submit today's Florida court decision, finding in favor of a gay foster couple petitioning to adopt their foster sons, and finding Florida's legislative ban on gay adoption unconstitutional.)

One of Rodriguez's key points is that, in their battle with gay marriage, churches have chosen make the sin more important than the family, have chosen to expel gays even as that expulsion breaks the family structure, both in terms of gay parents and gay children.

Here are some key portions of the interview:

American families are under a great deal of stress. The divorce rate isn't declining, it's increasing. And the majority of American women are now living alone. We are raising children in America without fathers. I think of Michael Phelps at the Olympics with his mother in the stands. His father was completely absent. He was negligible; no one refers to him, no one noticed his absence.

The possibility that a whole new generation of American males is being raised by women without men is very challenging for the churches. I think they want to reassert some sort of male authority over the order of things. I think the pro-Proposition 8 movement was really galvanized by an insecurity that churches are feeling now with the rise of women.

...The pro-8 campaign calls itself the Protect Family Movement, even though the issue of family was the very reason gays needed to have marriage. There are partners in gay unions now who have children, and those children need to be protected. If my partner and I had children, either through a previous marriage or because we adopted them, I would need to be able to take them to the emergency room. I would need to be able to protect them with the parental rights that marriage would give me. It was for the benefit of the family that marriage was extended to homosexuals.

...Now these churches are going after homosexuals as a way of insisting on their own propriety. They are insisting that they have a role to play in the general society as moral guardians, when what we have seen in the recent past is just the opposite. I mean, it's one thing for the churches to insist on their right to define the sacrament of marriage for their own members. But it's quite another for them to insist that they have a right to define the relationships of people outside their communities. That's really what's most troubling about Proposition 8. It was a deliberate civic intrusion by the churches.

Obama's political capital

It was the linkage of these two concepts that, for me, really epitomized the arrogance of the Bush Presidency: "mandate" and "political capital". After winning ("winning") the 2004 election, Bush used these words together in a way that really was completely decoupled from reality.

So imagine my delight when I found a new example of what political capital really is.

On Fresh Air this morning, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid spoke about the perception of Barack Obama by world leaders. Even before assuming the Presidency, Obama enjoys immense popularity in Europe and elsewhere. There is a prevalent feeling that the Obama Presidency represents a new hope for positive relations with the United States. Rashid said that, in his meetings with world leaders, across the board the sentiment is the same: "We can't say no to Obama."

This isn't just chumming up to the Europeans. These good relations have a tangible effect that the Bush Administration apparently wrote off from the get-go. Already, Rashid points out, Denmark and Sweden have become more supportive of the U.S., sending for the first time combat troops to Afghanistan in support of the coalition efforts there. Certainly other NATO allies will be called to contribute more, as well, once Obama takes office. That means less pressure on American forces and less expenditure of American blood.

That, my dears, is political capital. Not capital born of an electoral mandate (though certainly Obama's 6% margin of victory blows Bush's squeaker elections out of the water) but capital born of identity. Barack Obama commands political capital across the globe by virtue of who he is, how he thinks and what he says.

In a world that is now so fragile, that is capital we can spend.

And, while we're at it, let's just celebrate that we're entering into an era where, once again, words and phrases will be expected to comport with reality.