Andrew Golis

Don’t expect anything from me today. I’m working on other things and won’t be around. Email me if you have any questions or thoughts!

E.J. Dionne and I are apparently in the exact same head space (although his is populated by more cogent ideas and eloquent phrases). His column today (Friday) on Obama’s speech dovetails nicely with my thoughts yesterday.

Oh, the things we can find out there…
(Apologies for the non-embed rule set by the user. Just double-click the video and it will take you to YouTube.)

Dana Milbank perfectly proves the point I made below, taking a complicated intellectual speech as an opportunity to write 800 words of superficial horse-race analysis about Obama’s presidential aspirations and similarities to President Bush. How do we expect to have a serious conversation about serious ideas if we have journalists writing hackish consultant-style commentary?

I mentioned yesterday what I believe was a deeply meaningful speech by Barack Obama about religion and American politics. The headlines were pitifully simplistic and misleading. From the AP: “Obama: Democrats Must Court evangelicals.” From ABC: “Obama Tells Dems to Get Religion.” The ABC article wasn’t bad, but generally speaking each story depicts Obama’s point as a political one: that Democrats must be more forthcoming and religious if they are to win over evangelical voters.

I’m forced to wonder whether or not these reporters were at the speech. Maybe our cynical times don’t allow for the contemplation of intellectual rather than electoral arguments in our politics, but this was not what Obama was saying. He was asking for a willingness to be fair-minded toward those with whom you disagree, to not stereotype, on either side, those with different theology (or none at all). He pointed to fundamentalists as much as he pointed to secularists. He asked for a deeper dialogue and modeled for us what a contribution to it might look like: thoughtful, sincere. Here was a call for nuance and mutual respect, and it was portrayed by our national print media, the better media, as a piece of political advice.

The liberal blog reaction was worse. They accused Obama of having a “Lieberman moment” reinforcing unfair stereotypes by pushing “the false idea that Democrats are hostile to religion.” They, like the print articles, portrayed Obama politically, accusing him of pandering to evangelicals and selling out Democratic values. Nathan Newman at TPM Cafe noted that some of these arguments literally invented things Obama was saying to support these accusations. None of them responded with anything resembling thoughtful, respectful discourse. They assumed the worst.

My question is this: would we- newspapers, liberal bloggers- know a heartfelt, nuanced and important argument if it hit us over the head? If everything is simplified to demographics and betrayal, talking points and posturing, can we possibly begin to believe in our politics enough to believe that government can contribute to our lives? Can we possible start to put back together our polarized, frustrated and basically lost society? Obama seems to want to find out. It’s unclear whether or not anyone is willing to join him.

It looks like this whole checks and balances thing works. However, Dahlia Lithwick notes that the Supreme Court may not be enough:

The administration isn’t really asking for constitutional blank checks. Why should it, when the president thinks he has his own constitutional Swiss bank account?

In other words, if the President doesn’t care what they say, does this do us any good in the short run?

update:Lithwick’s colleague Walter Dellinger tries to reassure her.

Kevin Drum has the dirt on an effort to have clean elections in my home state.

The big news of the day is obviously the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Bush Administration’s military tribunals violate both American law and the Geneva Conventions. SCOTUSblog has analysis [via: TPM]. Think Progress claims that the ruling also “Undermines Bush’s Legal Case For Warrantless Wiretapping.“

update: Andrew Sullivan chimes in:

The more you read, the more you see what a body-blow this is to our quasi-monarchical president.

Kos notes that Deval Patrick, an impressive aspiring governor of Massachusetts, has pulled ahead of the insider favorite in the Democratic Party. This is great news for people who want a smarter, more decent politics.

Barack Obama gave a speech today at the Call to Renewal conference on religion and American politics. I will not try to simplify it into a few sentences or offer commentary on its political relevance. This is not a speech to read for its political content. It is a speech to read for its intellectual content. Most importantly, it is a speech to read (or click here and watch), not read about. It is rare that we have politicians who say complicated and meaningful things and it would be unfortunate if we didn’t recognize that and listen. Further thoughts tomorrow…