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Tag: engagement

Wake Up And Smell The Politics

Can a coffee kingpin give American politics the jolt it needs to snap out of its Tea Party hangover?

Don’t hold your breath. But Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has made a valiant attempt, by way of an appeal he sent out by blast email and published in full-page ads in both The New York Times and USA Today.

“I love our country. I am a beneficiary of the promise of America,” wrote the Brooklyn-born, self-made industry leader. “I am frustrated by our political leaders’ steadfast refusal to recognize that, for every day they perpetuate partisan conflict and put ideology over country, America and Americans suffer from the combined effects of paralysis and uncertainty.”

He continued, listing the concerns that are troubling many average Americans these days: They’re unemployed or underemployed — or afraid of becoming so. Consumers are not spending money. Small businesses can’t get credit. And Congress and the White House don’t seem to get it.

Schultz also called on other American business leaders to join him in withholding political contributions until Congress and the president get their act together, play nice and enact a “transparent, comprehensive, bipartisan debt-and-deficit package … that honestly, and fairly, sets America on a path to long-term financial health and security.”

Oh, I know, President Obama tried to sound demanding in his nationally televised speech on jobs Thursday. He raised his voice authoritatively while delivering lines that Howard Schultz would cheer. He said that Americans can’t wait while Republicans trounce every jobs proposal. House Speaker John Boehner barely lifted a sleepy eyelid.

I don’t want to be too hard on Schultz. He seems like a mensch. When it comes to messaging around social conscience, few companies do it as well as Starbucks. It has been adept at letting its customers know that the part-time barista serving up your skinny macchiato of fair-trade coffee beans is covered by a generous health care plan. But he’s out of his league. It’s hard to see what holding back his money and a bit of that of a few rich friends will accomplish.

Washington is a business; its clientele are actually people like Schultz, who have multinational corporations to look after. He may be aware that the U.S. Supreme Court granted CEOs even more political power with its landmark Citizens United decision in 2010. Political action committees, lobbyists and the new “527” advocacy groups, which are able to draw unlimited contributions, are what props up our political class. Congressional committee chairmanships are given to the most proficient fundraisers. If he’s withholding his money from that business, good for him. But he’s not going to reform it anytime soon, not the way he’s going about it.

You don’t fix a broken political system by refusing to engage with it — especially right now, when the critical flaw is a certain asymmetry between the parties. In 2008, the electorate chose an eloquent candidate for president who conjured a future of hope and change and bipartisan cooperation. The reality, once he took office, turned out to be different. Trying to remain aloof from the partisan fray doesn’t produce the best results in the actual game of politics.

Barack Obama’s presidency has not been a total failure. But he has bitterly disappointed many his erstwhile admirers for the simple reason that he seems unwilling or unable to stand up for some basic Democratic principles. During the debt-limit debate, it was left to Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in the country, to take to the op-ed page of the New York Times to beg Congress to raise taxes on rich people like himself. Obama has surrendered the bully pulpit to the better organized, better disciplined — and better at politics — Republican Party.

And it’s going to take more than sharing an artfully prepared latte to change things.

(Mary Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City Star. Readers may write to her at: Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Mo. 64108-1413, or via e-mail at msanchez@kcstar.com.)

(c) 2011, The Kansas City Star. Distributed by Tribune Media Services

Clinton Encourages India To Work With U.S. To Block China’s Global Influence

CHENNAI, India (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday challenged India to expand its traditional sphere of interest from South Asia to neighboring regions where it can help the United States blunt China’s increasing assertiveness.

Clinton appealed for India to project its influence eastward, toward China’s backyard in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim, as well as boost engagement in Central Asia, on China’s western flank. She said the U.S. and India shared values that made them powerful partners in promoting security, democracy and development in areas into which China has made a push for dominance.

“Our interests align and our values converge,” she said in a speech in India’s southeastern port of Chennai, a fast-growing manufacturing hub chosen as the venue by U.S. officials who believe it is a natural jumping-off point for a greater Indian role in East Asia. With its democratic traditions, India can “inspire others to follow a similar path of openness and tolerance,” Clinton said.

“India’s leadership has the potential to positively shape the future of the Asia-Pacific,” she said. “We think that America and India share a fundamentally similar vision for the future of this region.”

Clinton announced that the Obama administration would soon launch a three-way dialogue with India and Japan, long America’s chief ally in countering Chinese ambitions.

In another bid to lure Indian eyes east, the administration has decided to invite India to participate as an observer, for the first time, in the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that the U.S. will host in Hawaii in November, according to American officials. Membership in the group is limited to nations and economies that border the Pacific Ocean, which India does not.

Clinton was careful not to specifically identify China as the target of the effort to court India as an Asia-Pacific power. But, her comments left little doubt about U.S. intentions.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.

Pawlenty Embraces Bush Doctrine, Slams Obama as “Timid” in Foreign Policy Address

Tacking right on foreign affairs, and rejecting the Obama administration’s policy of “engagement” with the Middle East, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty issued a scathing critique of the president’s realist approach to Egypt, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday morning.

He lambasted Obama’s relatively cautious approach to the Syrian Green Movement that erupted in the wake of the disputed presidential election in 2009.

““Engagement” meant that in 2009, when the Iranian ayatollahs stole an election, and the people of that country rose up in protest, President Obama held his tongue. His silence validated the mullahs, despite the blood on their hands and the nuclear centrifuges in their tunnels,” he said.

His most intense criticism of the president was on Israel, where Republicans seem to think the president’s push for a settlement freeze and a return to 1967 borders with land swaps has provided them an opening with American Jews.

“Nowhere has President Obama’s lack of judgment been more stunning than in his dealings with Israel,” he intoned, saying it “breaks my heart” that the president treats that country as a “problem” rather than an ally.

He heaped praise on Israel, as most Republican presidential candidates do, championing its role in the Middle East as a democracy and partner and saying he rejected Obama’s “anti-Israel” attitude.

Pawlenty said Obama was too focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, attributing it more of an influence on Middle East politics in genera than is realistic. More important, he argued, was the phenomenon of “oppressed people yearning for freedom.”

He suggested that he would aggressively assist democratic movements as George W. Bush attempted to, but didn’t seem to be cognizant of the possibility that democracy could produce nations hostile to the United States, as it did when Hamas won elections in the Palestinian Authority in 2006.

Pawlenty embraced the “War on Terror” frame of combating radical Islamic terrorism, another signature Bush policy, implying this would be a long, episodic struggle.

At the conclusion of his remarks, he warned Republicans against isolationism, a reference to presidential primary rival former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman–and to a lesser degree, Mitt Romney–calling for a rapid drawdown from Afghanistan and a more measured approach to foreign intervention.

“America already has one political party devoted to decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal. It does not need a second one.”