Correction: It wasn’t Al-Jazeera, it wasAl-Arabiya.
It’s interesting to juxtapose your post with that of gravitycrash above.
I’m always amazed by statements like these.
You really don’t understand that compromise isn’t just something weak people do when they can’t overpower their opposition? It really does almost always lead to better results.
Ultimatums are not something to be thrown around whenever you have the power to back it up. What Israel does is Israel’s business. The POTUS is obliged to give them his honest opinion on their policies, but beyond there’s no reason to start pushing them around just because he can.
Mike Huckabee said something fairly insightful that I’ve been using to reassure my right-wing friends and clients: “Obama is more likely to disappoint his friends on the left than enrage his enemies on the right.”
I worked for the Obama campaign and worked to try to defeat Saxby Chambliss to give Obama 60. I have great hope that he will accomplish everything he promised still. But he needs folks on the left to pull him along.
He hasn’t been in office even a year - has it been even half a year? There are things I want to see him do, but I’ll be patient for a while yet.
Yeah, I figure I’ll wait to start bitching until about year 2.
Except when it doesn’t. For instance, it would not be better to compromise with the pro-torture faction and permit waterboarding without a plastic bag. And, to take up the healthcare example, a single payer system would be best. The public-private plan should be the transitional compromise, not the starting point for negotiations. So, if Obama starts bargaining away a public option, there really isn’t much left.
I’m not saying Obama should be tossing ultimatums around like confetti. But, in certain cases, they make a lot of sense. What Israel does would be Israel’s business if it didn’t receive $3 billion in aid every year. Even putting aside the human rights issues and just looking at it from a financial perspective–you wouldn’t keep paying someone’s college tuition if they keep failing all their classes.
Yes, there are times when you need to compromise. But you don’t do it when you’re the one holding all the cards.
Obama was elected by liberals but he still represents all Americans. He should at least consult conservatives and attempt to compromise if possible.
So if I decided that all imprisonment was torture, and I had the power to ban the entire practice… it’s automatically better for me to do so, no matter what anyone else thinks?
Did the possibility not occur to you to continue providing aid, but on the condition that there is some verification that this aid is not contributing to further Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories?
Israel get’s aid, without being ruled by a foreign power, and the US gets to avoid funding practices which they disagree with. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But without an omniscient judge to decide who is right and who is wrong, it’s usually your best choice.
Which cards you are holding has absolutely no significance to when you should or shouldn’t compromise. Unless one of those cards is omniscience.
Wait… does Obama permit waterboarding? Or are you just making up stuff?
Well, it’s not. If actual torture was taking place, then that would be the appropriate course of action.
I see what you’re saying, but I think we’re approaching this from two different directions.
I’m assuming that a certain position (whatever it may be) is the correct one. That is, having heard the other side’s arguments, you find that there is no merit to their opposition. So, the question is not a matter of determining what is the best policy, but rather what is the best way to implement that policy.
You seem to be arguing that compromise is important in arriving at the best policy. I’m saying that, when you have heard all the arguments and evaluated them, you should use compromise as a strategy when you don’t have enough power to enact it on your own. (Of course, this presumes you are confident that you have a comprehensive understanding of the issue at hand.)
No, that was purely a hypothetical. However, a real example could be Obama’s refusal to prosecute the agents involved and limiting any investigation to the higher-ups.
How is that a compromise? He never said he would prosecute for such things. He said in April 2008:
I’m not seeing this as an example of where Obama wanted something, but had to give something up in order to get it. It sounds like he staked out a pragmatic position on the issue long ago.
Depends on how you look at it:
Obama may have been right in not “prejudging” the DOJ’s investigations of the architects of the practice, but he still believes that CIA agents should not be prosecuted. That is not for him to decide.
The quote you have provided says nothing about interfering with DOJ operations. Though I suppose you could interpret the “we” in
in any number of ways.
sleeping
you’re right that we’re approaching this from two different directions.
I just disagree with the direction you are approaching from.
You’re assuming that a certain position (whatever it may be) is the correct one.
That’s what I disagree with.
If you’ve heard the other side’s arguments, and found that there is no merit to their opposition
…and they’ve heard your side’s arguments and found that there is no merit to your policy
…What then?
You seem to think there is a point at which disagreements can simply be put to rest with “I am right. You are wrong.”
If that were the case, you could move on to deciding how to best implement your policy under the blanket assumption that you are definitely right… and you would be justified in doing just about anything to enact your chosen policy. Really. If you are definitely right, and they are definitely wrong you’re justified in doing just about anything to get your way.
I am only saying that this would require omniscience, to know for certain that you are right. A rational person must always accept the possibility that they are wrong (even when they cannot see how they could be, and are convinced their opposition has no merit) Because of this, you can never simply move on from deciding the best policy to enacting it. Compromising with those who disagree remains a necessary part of enacting good policy even when you have the option of overpowering opposition.
Not anything. In general, it should be proportional to the importance of what you’re trying to achieve. And, so far as the present situation is concerned, there is no need to do anything illegal.
I disagree. There are some issues where I can see how someone would take an opposing view. But there are also some where I don’t feel there is a legitimate counterargument. I don’t think any of us live our lives with doubt on every issue, receptive to counterarguments we’ve already heard (and dismissed) before.
Note that I’m *not * suggesting that Obama seize dictatorial power in order to pass some agenda. I’m saying that he should be more aggressive, while nevertheless operating within the framework of our representative democracy. What’s more, if the majority of the population supports his agenda, and a majority of senators and representatives are on board, it might actually be anti-democratic for him to compromise in pursuit of some sort of consensus or super-majority. Especially if it significantly waters down the original proposal.
I suppose you might argue that Obama is not merely adjusting to the way the wind blows, but has actually changed his mind about certain issues. In that case, it really would be about policy rather than strategy. But I think it’s just the pressure groups.
This is June 17. The President will not have been in office for six months until July 20. He hasn’t even been in office five months yet.
Where have they escaped to? Why was Obama in charge of prosecuting them?
Well I was very careful to say ‘almost anything’. 
While I won’t disagree that it should be proportional to the importance of what you’re trying to achieve, I see no reason to compartmentalize the importance of one goal from another in this case. The sum total of all the goals one could achieve “if only nobody could stop me” adds up to justify more than it would seem from looking at each hypothetical achievement on its own.
There’s nothing unusual about feeling that there’s no legitimate counterargument. But that’s an entirely different matter than knowing there isn’t one. I really don’t see how anyone can disagree with that.
I wouldn’t say that I have doubt on every issue, at least not from the common definition of doubt as something you feel. It’s just a fact that the human mind is fallible and anyone can be wrong even when they are sure they’re right. Even if you don’t feel it, you have to recognize this fact intellectually. Also, I don’t think you have to be receptive to arguments you’ve already dismissed to compromise with those who disagree with you. Think of it more along the lines of hedging your bets.
Well, that’s just a matter of degrees, so I don’t really disagree with that. What I have a problem with is the idea that you should act as if you are definitely right just because it seems like you are.
I see no reason why it would be anti-democratic. He was elected to do what he thinks is best for everybody (including those who didn’t vote for him) If he thinks it’s best to ignore the reality of human fallibility and pretend he is omniscient, then that’s his choice. But if he has the sense to take a more measured approach, that’s also his choice. Neither choice would be anti-democratic.
Oh, see, the thing is I voted for Democrats, as did a lot of other Americans–a majority, in fact–because I want to be governed by Democrats, not Republicans.
Totally understandable but Obama still represents all Americans. One of the (many) short-comings of Bush (IMO; I’m a moderate Republican) was that he made little effort to represent all Americans and I believe he’ll go down as one of the worst presidents in the last 100 years. It looks like Obama, to his credit, understands this.
Moderates, whose rank and file are hard to pin down because they change from year to year, would have no problem with this. To Republicans, you make a lot of sense because they got annihilated in the past two election cycles. To Democrats, you sound like something they’d like to have done for couple of cycles before that when they were in the minority. Any party in the minority likes to remind the other party that minority party rights are important, until they get into the majority. The Republicans have either had doors opened for them or worked hard to open a few doors in policy and they’ve rammed through stuff that appeals to Republicans and/or Conservatives. The problem we have now is if it’s fair for the other side to do it as well. If one side is in power, that’s unfortunately how our system works and a remnant of the spoils system in action. Personally, I’d love to see Democrats get every single thing through on the big issues (Energy, Healthcare, National Security, Education), but I don’t know if that’s necessarily the best for the country. (It’s part of a crisis I’m having with regards to labor: is strong labor, which I believe in, good for my state? Probably, yes. Is if good for the country, probably no, with globalization being so rampant. Life makes some winners, but it makes a whole lot of average folks and some losers and in many ways the average folks and losers benefit, but in some pretty important ways, they lose badly.)
With healthcare, as the last industrialized country to be looking at nationalized medicine as the answer, we should be in an enviable position to take the best parts of the other systems that work throughout the world. Unfortunately, because of overcompromise and the lack of desire to spend political capital, we could very well end up with the lamest and worst health care for our citizens that our money can buy, which is lamentable at best, pretty damned stupid in the middle, and borderline criminal at worst.