Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Tagged with: Jimmy Carter

They Called Him Stretch →

My favorite baseball player ever died this month. Perhaps that is a rite of middle aged American male passage. Willie McCovey was a gigantic left-handed slugger who hit his first home run when Eisenhower was President and George Christopher was mayor of San Francisco, the city where McCovey played most of his career. He hit his last home run for the Giants when Jimmy Carter was in the White House and Dianne Feinstein was our mayor. During his very long career, McCovey was often overshadowed by his more famous teammate with whom he shared a home state, Alabama, and the same first name. McCovey was not as good as Willie Mays, but almost nobody ever was. Nonetheless McCovey a formidable power hitter. When he retired in 1980 McCovey’s 521 career home runs tied him with Ted Williams for second most ever by a left handed hitter. At that time, the only player with more round trippers from the left side of the plate was Babe Ruth.

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Is a Non-Competitive Primary Really What the Democrats Need? →

As the 2016 election approaches and the question of whether or not Hillary Clinton runs becomes an even bigger topic of discussion among the punditry, it is likely that we will also be told that having a clear nominee early in the process, rather than a hard fought, and potentially nasty, campaign for the nomination will be good for the party. This idea is intuitively appealing as contested primaries can make it hard to unite behind one candidate in the general election and can damage the eventual nominee. It is additionally something that we frequently hear from front-runners hoping to avoid a tough primary. This idea is intuitive and attractive, but it should be noted that it also completely false.

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Supporting Democracy and Supporting Dictatorship in Egypt →

The massive demonstrations in Egypt against that country's authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak have had some interesting effects on American politics as well. Some apologists for the administration of George W. Bush, notably Elliott Abrams in the pages of the Washington Post, have argued that the events in Egypt have vindicated former President Bush. Believing this assertion clearly requires a very charitable understanding of recent history. There is, of course, very little evidence to suggest that the people struggling in Egypt today are somehow influenced by either the former president's words regarding democracy or by events in Iraq. In some abstract way, Bush was right in that the Egyptian people, like all people, want their freedom, but this is a very tenuous reason for giving the former president any credit for what is happening in Egypt.

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Despite Appearances, California's Republican Party is Still Looking Backward →

It is not, however, Fiorina and Whitman's gender that is most important and revealing, but their backgrounds. Both are businesswomen who have worked as CEOs, Fiorina for Hewlett Packard and Whitman for Ebay. Not coincidentally, they both relied on ample personal wealth to win their primaries and will be able to draw on this wealth in their general elections campaigns as well. In this regard Fiorina and Whitman are not so unusual for a party that has nominated and elected numerous wealthy business executives to office around the country, and may well nominate Mitt Romney for President in 2012. In this regard, the outcomes of the California primaries do not demonstrate that the Republican Party there is forward looking and oriented towards the future, but that they are still stuck in the same trite and tiresome story lines.

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Another Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party →

Rendell's decision to make these comments now, at a time when the sitting Democratic president is attacked almost daily as a socialist, might seem strange, but it is not. President Obama, like every Democratic president, has veered to the center and upset the party's progressive base, so in that regard Rendell's comments are not entirely apropos of nothing. Rendell, however, is something of a strange messenger for this sentiment. As a governor and former chair of the DNC, Rendell is, as much as anybody, a Democratic Party insider, not a firebrand outsider trying to shake up the party. If Rendell really believed that the party was losing its soul, he might have said or done something about it at some point in the last several years.

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The Politics of Passing Health Care →

The meaning of the approaching final vote on health care has changed since the halcyon early days of the Obama presidency when progressives experienced a hope and optimism unheard of in recent decades. The final vote on health care was supposed to be a cause for celebration as a progressive goal going back at least half a century was finally to be realized. It was supposed to be the most significant piece of progressive domestic legislation in many of our lifetimes. All of that changed late last year when Obama compromised away the public option and the expanded Medicare proposal. The last minute efforts to reinsert the public option felt more like death spasms for that possibility, rather than a serious chance of reinvigorating the bill.

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Bobby Jindal, Dan Quayle and Socialist Health Care →

Bobby Jindal has "seen enough" and Dan Quayle thinks President Obama needs to "tame the left wing of his party." Perhaps it is time to give the Republican Party some credit for consistency, if not exactly relevancy or accuracy. Dan Quayle, who has gracefully made the transition from boy wonder vice president to elder statesman of his party without pausing along the way to actually accomplish anything, and Bobby Jindal, who seems to have succeeded in combining the politics of Ronald Reagan with the earnestness and credibility of Ronald McDonald, seem to agree that the biggest threat to the country is that President Obama will pass health care reform and lead the country irrevocably down the road to socialism.

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The First 100 Days: A Whole That Is Greater Than Its Parts →

Placing Obama's first 100 days in context is important because for the first 100 days, at least, the whole outweighs the sum of its parts. Not only have Obama's first 100 days been by far the best of any president of my lifetime, but they began not a day too soon. The country was reeling economically, directionless in foreign policy, losing credibility and support abroad and suffering a crisis of confidence at home when Obama became president. Obama has begun to turn all of this around. Moreover, even though Obama has not been a constant optimist in the White House he has restored confidence both abroad and domestically as most Americans believe our new president is, for the most part, leading us in the right directions. There have also been a range of less high profile issues including stem cell research, national service, allowing science back into policy and, frankly, bringing a sense of normalcy back to Washington, for which Obama also deserves credit. Ultimately, what stops Obama from getting an A is his approach to addressing finance and banking issues, so his final grade is A-.

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Should President Obama Be More Optimistic? →

For Obama the question of whether he should be more optimistic is somewhat different, and not just because the current economic situation is uniquely dire. To some extent this is a matter of style. Obama doesn't need to be more optimistic because he already is so essentially forward-looking and hopeful. In addition to being a young president with a young, happy family and confident, unflappable disposition, Obama's election, in the midst of this economic crisis, was itself a major triumph of optimism, for many the first such triumph during a particularly gloomy period in our history. Accordingly, Obama has an enormous reservoir of optimism on which he can draw. His presidency is based around the notion of hope. If he was more explicit about this feeling, constantly making upbeat predictions about the economy, or other overt statements of optimism, he would risk sounding foolish and lacking in seriousness and gravitas.

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What We Learned from the Republicans Last Week →

The Obama administration's successful passage of the stimulus package, although not the exact one they wanted, is a significant and telling victory for the new administration as it has been decades since a Democratic president has begun his term with a comparable legislative accomplishment. Although, the stimulus package had its detractors, and its passage was not exactly an easy process, it was a victory for the new administration and should put to rest concerns regarding the ability of this administration to get things done.

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A New President for Urban America →

There are a range of issues, some new and some old, which have particular impact on big cities. The essential urban issues of quality public education, safe streets and job development remain central for all big city residents. If, as seems to be the case, President Obama is going to work for investment in our infrastructure, it is likely that his administration will be more sensitive to the needs of urban Americans with regards to infrastructure in areas such as public parks, public transportation and the like. Moreover, Obama is better positioned to bring sensitivity and awareness, and equally significantly, an appreciation, of some of these issues than any other recent president.

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President Obama and Our America →

Today, I thought about my own two children, who are almost the exact same age as Malia and Sasha Obama, and who woke up this morning shouting "Obama is president today!" My children do not really remember the protests we took them to at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, but they remember this election, so their first presidential memories will be much happier than mine. They will remember watching Obama's string of primary victories, knocking on doors and eating ice cream in Pennsylvania during the primary and general election and, of course, this day, when a president who they can think of as theirs was sworn in. I feel much more confident about their future and the America in which they will grow up because of this new president. I am also almost a little jealous. They get Obama as their childhood president, while we were stuck with Ford, Carter and Reagan.

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Making an Obama Presidency a Success →

An Obama presidency will, almost no matter what, be a welcome relief and major improvement on the current administration. The impact of that alone should not be understated. If, however, Obama is a four year interlude between Republican administrations like Carter was, or if, like Clinton, he fails to pass any major legislation or build the party, Obama will have been a disappointment. Moreover, a truly successful Obama administration will not only succeed legislatively, but strengthen the Democratic Party moving forward.

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Are They Experienced? →

The question of how we define foreign policy experience, however, is worth examining a little more closely. Currently foreign policy is experience is defined far too narrowly with credit being awarded for only a few conventional accomplishments. Understanding how the US government makes decisions about foreign policy and having detailed knowledge about the perspectives of people outside the US are both valuable components of foreign policy experience, but the former is usually the criteria used for measuring foreign policy experience. The latter, however, for the most part, cannot be gained once somebody is elected to the senate or holds high office in the American government. Congressional delegations, for example, can be used by participants to gain a deeper understanding of a foreign policy issue, or how the leadership of a particular government thinks, but they are not the same as spending time working or living in a foreign country. This kind of experience is best gained before a candidate becomes a famous public figure.

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Charlie Black: Not Just Offensive, but Wrong →

Recent comments by John McCain's advisor Charlie Black regarding the potential impact of future terrorist attacks on McCain's presidential campaign, "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him," are not just offensive and inappropriate, but indicate that the McCain campaign is increasingly out of touch with how American voters are feeling this year. Black's comments rested on the notion that somehow Americans, if they feel threatened, will naturally turn to the crusty old Republican veteran rather than the untested, liberal, anti-war Democrat.

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