Heartache With Hard Work

Most awkward headline of the week: Vitter Blows Top at Airport. I’ll bet he did. But actually, the story is pretty funny even without the sexual innuendo. It’s also pretty depressing that this guy is almost certainly going to get re-elected, too.

Elsewhere, Jason Zengerle mentions that rumors that Arlen Specter (Republican Senator of Pennsylvania, in tremendous danger of losing his seat) might switch parties, and asks why Democrats would want him. Two reasons. First, it turns out that 60 votes might very well be as important a milestone as people were saying (and which I argued against, BTW). The Republicans on stimulus were incredibly committed to obstruction. And on less high-profile issues they appear fully willing to filibuster across the board. Which means that getting Specter as a reliable Democratic vote, rather than having him be a vote they have to accomodate in order to pick off. Second, while it’s true that Specter-as-Democrat might not be the strongest guy the Democrats could run, there is something to be said for the importance of the next two years. It’s the beginning of the Obama term. It’s when health care, energy, education, etc. are all likely to come up. It may very well be worth it to get a reliable vote now even if it means risking a weaker candidate in 2010.

There’s another element here. For the most part politicians will gravitate toward the ideology of their consituents and their parties. There’s every chance that if Specter switched parties, he’d pretty quickly move left and begin representing the will of his new caucus. Basically, there’s every reason to believe that switching parties wouldn’t be merely a cosmetic change, but would free him (or push him) quite a bit farther to the left. I mean, if he wanted to win in 2010 after selling out the Republicans, he’d need to get some serious goodwill from the Democrats, which is not going to be won by fighting with Obama.

Jeffords followed this path. Once he left the Republican Party, he started voting as a very reliable Democrat. A lot of it depends on Specter himself of course, but I think if there’s any chance of this happening, it’ll be because he’s made the calculation that at Democrat is going to win in 2010 and it might as well be him. If he switched and then continued to obstruct, he would have no allies and would almost certainly lose. I think he would have to calculate that the only path to victory in that world is to become a gung-ho Democrat.

Anyways, I think it’s all quite unlikely. But a little speculation doesn’t hurt (unless it’s in the real estate market).

Discover Me – Kimo

I’ve recently spent a lot of time listening to Kimo, from all the way over in New Zealand. Their new record Surrender is characterized by a loose pop sensibility, songs that glide smoothly from understated hook to a light electronic swirl and back again. These are beautiful songs, totally unselfconscious, and delighted with their capacity to express simple joys.

I still have only heard about half of it, thanks to the difficulties in inter-continental commerce, but I’m very excited to get my hands on the full record.

I discovered them originally thanks to Music For the Moment, which seems to have turned me onto all kinds of great music in the last few months. Strongly recommended reading.

Dollhouse – Gray Hour

Talking to my friends, I’ve heard widely varied reactions to the fourth episode of Dollhouse. Some think it was (by far) the worst episode, while others think it was the best. I’m somewhere in the middle. I agree it had a lot of faults, but at the same time I’m not really sure I can justify any of the others as significantly better.

One possible reason for this is that, on the whole, the show overall just hasn’t been that impressive yet.

The Bad

– Helo. Oh Helo. I’m not sure they have any idea what they’re doing with this FBI plotline. I don’t like the character, I don’t think what’s happening makes any sense, and I’m not convinced it will ever get better. For one thing, they’re clearly *closely* monitoring this guy so why are we supposed to care about his “investigations”? Victor is an Active, okay. Well why did Ballard pick him to be the go-to guy for info on the Dollhouse? Is Victor out there in the world ALL the time building up this identity for Ballard to find it? That seems like a lot of work for an idiot FBI agent. It’s possible that they’ll be able to make sense of it all eventually, but I have my doubts.

– Everything with Echo post-wipe was boring and lame. The conversation about art. WTF. C’mon.

– More annoying self-aware dialogue with double-entendres about fame and identity and the like. We get it. People can unknowingly say things that hint at the way Echo is an Active. Ha ha.

– The line about “always wear comfortable shoes.” They weren’t wearing comfortable shoes. They were wearing heels, which are not comfortable and make NO sense for this sort of operation. It’s incredibly frustrating that the effort to convey “badass woman” seems to require her to be wearing heels.

– The episode description on Hulu: “Echo’s stint as a midwife doesn’t prove as laborious as when she becomes an expert safe-cracker.” Now, I love puns, but that is just horrible.

– This is the third episode in a row to end precisely the same way – with some evidence that Echo remembers something from the recent events. It’s getting old. Find some other way to make that point and get some new ideas.

– Another Faith character. And, her post-wipe acting leaves a lot to be desired. For this to work, Eliza’s gotta demonstrate a lot more range than she has so far.

– Why did the security guards open fire on people trapped in a vault filled with incredibly valuable art? Also, considering how blindingly easy it was for Taffy and what’s-his-name to escape once the guards showed up, why didn’t all three of them just avail themselves of that option without all the freaking out?

The Good

– First and foremost, most of the bad stuff above relates to pacing and the relative letdown of this episode’s plot. On the whole, I felt less anguished about the meta what-is-this-show-really-about stuff than I have in the other ones. They laid some interesting groundwork for what could turn into good plotlines later, even if this particular one was a bit of a dud. The scene at the beginning with the Actives “flocking” for example was great.

– The section from Tally running into the hall to find the security guard right up until she was wiped was excellent. Some neat little twists, lots of suspense, and the moment when she called Boyd and then was wiped had me on the edge of my seat.

– The “WTF just happened” scenes were very well done. Just the right amount of hint-dropping for the future and a demonstration of how much this disrupts their idea of what they’re doing. Both Adelle and Topher were very well portrayed – by far the best performances by Williams and Kranz so far.

Summary: there was less actively frustrating about this episode than the others – except for some general boredom with the second half of the episode and mounting evidence that they don’t seem that interested in avoiding plot holes or being subtle about “the point” of each episode. I’m still waiting for an episode that I would feel comfortable recommending to someone who isn’t already a Joss fanboy.

Toxic Toast – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Kevin Drum asks a good question:

Last year “counterparty risk” was practically crowned the phrase of the year. You couldn’t swing a dead copy of the Wall Street Journal without coming across it. It’s the reason we’re bailing out all these guys in the first place: if a big bank goes bust and stiffs all its creditors, then there’s a chance that they’ll go bust too, and before long you have a cascading series of failures that’s brought down the entire world. We tried letting Lehman Brothers — a relatively small bank in the grand scheme of things — go under, and all hell broke loose. That’s why the Fed stepped in a few days later to save AIG.

So why is everyone suddenly acting as if we just discovered yesterday that bailout money is being used to pay off AIG’s counterparties? And that this is some kind of scandal? Help me out here. I’m genuinely confused about why, after six months, this has suddenly become the populist outrage du jour.

There are two parts to this. First, people don’t actually understand what’s going on. I mean, I’ve been doing my best to follow along but it’s complicated even for folks who are making the effort. If you don’t have any background in economics and haven’t studied this stuff, it’s not difficult to understand why this stuff sounds bad. This is compounded by the second half of the answer: there are no good solutions. Sure, it’s essential that banks not go under. And sure, that means the creditors have to get paid. But that doesn’t mean this stuff fixes the banks or the wider crisis.

We’re in uncharted territory here. People have gotten into the habit of the economy just working. There hasn’t been a really serious crisis in about 25 years – one which would require the whole country to face the fact that there is simply no easy way out. So even when folks claim to understand how bad this is, there’s still a part of them that thinks why don’t they just fix the problem? And when that doesn’t happen, you search around for someone to blame.

Even very smart people seem stuck in the mindset of “the economy hasn’t recovered so what we’re doing must be wrong” – an attitude which completely fails to account for the fact that things could have been even worse if not for these measures.

Paying off creditors is something that is necessary to prevent banks from collapsing, i.e. – it forestalls something even worse in the future. But if you’re in trouble NOW, all you can see is the government “throwing money down the drain” on something that won’t possibly rectify your current situation.

By the way, This American Life had a show a week or two ago that tries to resolve this problem, sorting out exactly what’s wrong with the banks in terms that really help to clarify what’s going on. Combined with their earlier shows on the housing crisis, it’s not a stretch to say that they’ve done some of the best mainstream financial reporting of the past year.

So I got sent one of those facebook memes (25 things, 10 favorite albums, etc.) today, but this time I’m actually Patient One because (at least in this iteration) the particular subject originated with my friend. This one is 25 songs from your iPod on shuffle, with comments either about (or inspired by) each one.

Being the person that I am, I was intrigued and couldn’t help but undertake the task myself. Since this is (on occasion) a blog about music, I figured I might as well post the results here, too.

BTW, there are two reasons why I pretty much love all these songs and there are no major embarrassments. First, I got lucky. Second, the set of music on the iPod is pretty limited. It’s only 8 gigs and I actually use it mostly to listen to podcasts so I don’t really put any music on there that I’m not going to actively want to listen to.

1. American Girl – Tom Petty
One of my favorite Petty songs. And it still sounds great after 30+ years. I love his comment that this song sold more 12-string guitars than anything, except it was actually just two regular six-string ones.

2. Song For Kelly Huckaby – Death Cab for Cutie
I appreciate a lot of the stuff Ben Gibbard has done in the last five years, and I’m happy these guys are making some money. But I have to say I’ll never love the band even close to as much since they abandoned the lo-fi sound of those first records.

3. Sleeping Aides And Razorblades – Exploding Hearts
I really can’t get enough of this song. It’s everything that punk music is supposed to be – catchy, raucous, snide. And it’s a perfect mixture of the joy of music and the pain of a broken heart.

4. The Piano Song – Carissa’s Wierd
I still get sad that there’s no more Carissa’s Wierd. If there’s any band in the world that I feel like is mine and mine alone, it’s them.

5. Piazza, New York Catcher – Belle and Sebastian
This one was on Peter’s list, too. So I’ll just quote him: “Mike Piazza doesn’t get enough credit as a guy who destroyed pitching in the 90’s and early 2000’s and probably wasn’t juiced. The best offensive catcher ever. Also, probably gay.”

6. Saint Simon – The Shins
I actually think Chutes Too Narrow is quite a bit better than Oh, Inverted World. This song is part of the reason why. The orchestral bridge really does it for me.

7. Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space – Spiritualized
I saw Spiritualized in San Francisco last fall. They were horrible. I’m sure there was music in there somewhere but all I heard was ear-splitting noise. Which makes it all the more incredible that they’re responsible for this song: which is incredibly beautiful.

8. Coming In From the Cold – The Delgados
One of my all-time favorite songs. If there’s an indie-rock Hall of Fame, this song deserves a prominent plaque.

9. My City of Ruins – Bruce Springsteen
There’s a version of him playing this song about a week after 9/11. It’s just Bruce and his guitar and you can just see in his eyes and the little quavers of his voice how much it hurts. He wrote it about a neighborhood falling apart but I’m not sure it would be possible to write a better song about 9/11.

“Now’s there’s tears on the pillow, darling where we slept
And you took my heart when you left
Without your sweet kiss my soul is lost, my friend
Tell me how do I begin again?
My city’s in ruins”

10. Everything I Try to Do, Nothing Turns Out Right – Decemberists
From the Billy Liar EP, this is actually one of my favorite songs by them. Partly because it represents the type of songs they used to write before they got so caught up in this thematic-rock stuff. It’s personal, heartfelt, and honest in a way that we just aren’t trained to expect in music.

11. Zolpidem – The Sinister Turns
It’s fitting this made the list because I’ve been listening to this song a LOT recently. It’s irresistible in the way only the very best songs can manage – where you can hear two seconds and instantly need to listen to the whole thing.

12. Elevator Love Letter – Stars
I’m not sure it’s possible to write a better pop song. This is easily in my all-time top 10, probably in the top 5. It shimmers and dances and just absolutely breaks your heart. Every time.

13. Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand – Beulah
That first Beulah album was absolute genius. I love the intro to this song. Well over two minutes before the horns kick in. It feels like the first day that feels like spring after a long winter.

14. Blankets Stare – Carissa’s Weird
The live version from the I Before E album, where they actually kind of rock out for the last minute. The only thing I wish had been different about them was that they very seldom let their hair down like that.

15. Kurt – Dan Bern
Dan Bern is at his best on songs like this, when he’s not trying too hard to be goofy or to play some character. I think it pretty well captures how a whole lot of people felt when they heard that Cobain died.

Blank – another Carissa’s Wierd song. As much as I love them, three seems like a bit much for a list like this.

16. Violets of Dawn – Eric Andersen
Sort of the American version of Donovan. I used to check out CDs from the library – pretty much anything that looked remotely interesting. I heard this song in the middle of song random “folk songs of the 60s” record. I didn’t much care for any of the rest of them, but this one really entranced me. It’s subject to every cliché about early 60s folk, but I don’t care.

17. Closing Time – Semisonic
I’ve been going through a period of 90s reminiscence lately. I spent like three hours just watching old videos of 90s songs I hadn’t heard in years on youtube just the other day. In retrospect I’ve outgrown a lot of the music I loved at the time. But not this song, which is legitimately great and fully deserving of its popularity. I remember being at DDI in the summer of 1998 and EVERYONE was listening to this one.

18. Buildings and Bridges – Ani DiFranco
Ani has gone through many incarnations, but I don’t think any will ever be better than the original one when it was just her and her guitar.

19. The Iditarod – Birdmonster
Good old fashioned rock and roll still leaves and breathes in the 21st century.

20. Living Room – Tegan and Sara
The first Tegan and Sara song I really fell in love with. They don’t get nearly enough credit from the music-snob crowd because the story sounds too cute, but the Quin sisters have a lot of really great songs.

21. Dead – They Might Be Giants
Flood is easily my favorite TMBG album. I remember when I was first introduced to it. It was really like one of those cartoon eureka moments when I suddenly discovered that it was possible to make music like this. It was also in the midst of a summer at the GDI when the rest of the lab was incessantly playing MMMbop…

22. American Tune – Paul Simon
I’ve never been all that big on Paul Simon’s solo career (Graceland being the one HUGE exception), but I really love this song. It’s so perfectly 70s. After all the commotion and hope and dreams of the 60s had faded, and the various crises of the new decade were setting in, people were left wondering “well, what now?”

23. Hey Bulldog – The Beatles
I was worried The Beatles wouldn’t make it on here. What is there to say really? I ranked this as my 64th favorite Beatles song, which of course means that I love it. Those escalating pounded riffs that kick things off are my favorite part of the song.

24. Providence Is – Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Rumor has it the Bosstones have a new record coming out this year. That would be great. Their run of albums in the 90s matches up pretty well against anyone else that decade.

25. Disconnected – Face to Face
One of my all time favorite punk songs.

What’s your 25 songs?

Kaleidoscope – Purplespace
When I Signed Your Yearbook – Purplespace

I wrote about Purplespace a few months ago. At that point I had heard only a couple songs off A Tiny Little Spark (eMusic) but was quite excited. Since then I picked up a copy and that initial enthusiasm has been well borne out.

I described them before as “Vaguely shoegaze, just a bit electronic, gauzy dreampop – this is music that makes you want to stare at the stars…” And that still seems perfectly accurate. The only real thing I would add is that the record is one of those that takes on additional textures when listened to as one coherent chain of songs. While you might be tempted to write them off as a one-note act, the depth of the music and the subtle ways that they play with sound are really given a chance to shine here.

The vocal harmonies all the way through verge on perfection. To be sure, it’s a different kind of harmonizing than, say, The Beach Boys or folks of that ilk. While that sort of work tends to soar, Purplespace is much more about the way that voices can merge and sink into you.

“Kaleidoscope” sounds exactly like its name implies, while “When I Signed Your Yearbook” dances quietly through your subconscious, leaving traces of memory about lost loves and hidden smiles. “I Needed You” is more straightforward, evoking a beautiful, stubborn hope. And lest you think the record is entirely filled with fey whispers, there are tracks like “Artificial Symmetry” which don’t exactly rock, but which demonstrate that they are quite capable of taking their songs out on the open road. And the record closes with “November 17th,” a collection of meandering spoken dialogue that drops in and out, overlaid onto soundscape of electronic clicks and swirling synths. It’s nothing revolutionary, just very well executed.

A Tiny Little Spark is a record that makes you feel an immediate closeness. It’s one that you’ll want to spend a lot of time with. And it is definitely among my favorite albums of 2009.

Sorry to bring this up again, but how are ostensibly smart people–whose job is to cover politics–so consistently missing the point of this Limbaugh spat?

Limbaugh appears to be the de facto leader of the party for two reasons. First, because his rigidly partisan approach is the current strategy of the GOP in Washington. This has been demonstrated in the stimulus votes and in the attitude that the filibuster is literally required for every piece of even remotely controversial legislation (an attitude that is unique to this moment in history). Second, because any time a prominent Republican is even remotely critical of Limbaugh, they are quickly forced to walk back their comments.

The point of all this is that it’s BAD that Limbaugh (and those he represents) have such power. To say that he is the de facto leader is to say that those Republicans who actually hold office and are concerned with representing the people ought to be willing to assert themselves. The fact that Limbaugh is a buffoon and an entertainer is precisely why it’s troubling that he appears to have such influence in conservative circles right now.

Bringing up Limbaugh is “playing politics” but it only works because it happens to be true at this moment. If the Republicans had any interest in cooperating to work with the majority party on policies and ideas, the claim would be laughable. In a world where they are refusing to do this and instead are digging in their heels to play the obstructionists for the forseeable future, what is Obama supposed to do?

So yes, the Limbaugh scheme is a political game. And yes, it’s “partisan.” But it only works if the opposition is playing a far more tragic political game. If the Republicans want to neutralize this attack, there’s a very easy way to do it: simply break with Limbaugh by demonstrating a willingness to at least consider working with the Administration. They don’t have to accept everything without question, obviously. They won’t and shouldn’t. But people are smart enough to tell the difference between principled objections made in good faith and those done solely as a matter of political expedience. Start doing the former and this Limbaugh thing will disappar.

Promise Kept – DonkeyBoy
Promises – Eric Clapton

In a bizarre turn of events, Karl Rove makes the following claims:

Barack Obama won the presidency in large measure because he presented himself as a demarcation point. The old politics, he said, was based on “spin,” misleading arguments, and an absence of candor. He’d “turn the page” on that style of politics.
…
Promises have to be met. And a president who promised to be one thing cannot be another. At some point, the gap between good feelings and results, between perception and reality, closes.

What’s that? Karl Rove is now a proponent of Obama reforming health care to make it universal? He supports cap and trade? He supports closing Guantanamo?

That’s very noble of him, to notice that Obama ran on a platform of change, was elected in a resounding victory, and that therefore the will of the people as expressed ought to be hewed to.

Oh, wait. No. It’s just a preposterously spun hit job, making use of whatever tactics seem relevant to lash out at his political opponents, with zero effort to make his arguments fit together coherently. Indeed, in this same editorial he accuses Obama of trying to get health care reform and comprehensive energy regulation.

See, that’s the thing about this wave of attacks on Obama, accusing him of violating the principles on which he ran. If we’re supposed to take that seriously, then shouldn’t we be lauding him for actually DOING a wide range of things he promised he would do?

Headlines of the day:
Republicans Looking for Bottom
Obama Taps Clinton Ideas but Not Clinton Herself

Shane has done both of these things.

Black and White – NOFX

I’m really starting to get annoyed with John Dickerson. He’s the political writer for Slate, and usually has smart things to say. He’s also an excellent writer. And the Slate Political Gabfesthas been one of my favorite podcasts for a long time. So I like his work, but I’m growing increasingly frustrating with his work these days. He’s becoming the king of false equivalencies and stories premised on the idea that the world is strictly binary, where one either wholeheartedly works against an idea, or they absolutely support it.

First, there’s nothing in the world he loves more to do than say “Obama ran on change, but he’s an example of how he’s doing politics as usual. Gotcha!” While the general idea of such stories is perfectly legitimate – it’s worth paying attention to those (lots of) places where Obama isn’t different – Dickerson treats it like there are only two imaginable worlds. One where there’s CHANGE. And another where there’s POLITICS AS USUAL. And approximately half his stories deal with this question, often entirely without the nuance most people would attach to the concept.

To explain: most people didn’t vote for some ephemeral concept of “change.” They attached particular ideas to the floating signifier of the campaign slogan. Change isn’t a yes/no question for them, determined in little spit-fights over framing and the day-to-day pushbacks. It takes the form of wanting health care reform, or significant action on climate, or an end to the war in Iraq, or a pullback on expansive executive power, or gays serving openly in the military, or middle class tax cuts, or a hundred other real things. And to the extent that they care about the meta-question of “how is politics being conducted?” Rahn Emanuel is 100% correct as it relates to bipartisanship: “We just have to try. … We don’t have to succeed.” As I wrote about extensively back in November, the change Obama represents when it comes to partisanship is about demonstrating a willingness to talk and listen in good-faith to people who also want to do so.

Which brings me back to Dickerson. I follow him on Google Reader, and this morning he commented briefly on this editorial from David Plouffe, pushing the Limbaugh story, saying: “I suppose you can rail against Republicans for practicing politics-as-usual using disingenuous politics-as-usual arguments but someone might notice.”

It’s not disingenuous. It’s just not. It only appears that way if you interpret hard-nosed efforts to split the Republican Party as “disingenuous” rather than as simply political.

And I think that’s the crucial difference. You can do “politics” and not have it be “politics as usual.” Dickerson seems incapable of understanding that. The “as usual” addendum refers to a specific set of practices. Pointing out that Republicans seem bizarrely beholden to a guy who holds views that are incredibly unpopular with the general public does not qualify.

Here’s another recent example of his black and white perception on the world making for poor analysis:

He said in his address to Congress last week that hard times would require sacrifice from everyone, and that he was going to insist on rigorous budget discipline. This week, however, he’s granting an exception for a $410 billion pork-filled spending bill, which he’s going to sign with little opposition.

Accusing Obama of failing to follow through on his call for “doing hard things” is another of Dickerson’s favorite tropes. “Hard things” in this context always ends up being the things that Dickerson believes are so obviously good that the only possible explanation for not doing them is cowardice or political manuevering.

However, even in this article, he points out the following facts: “Undoing the bill’s many pet projects would create a bloodbath, angering both Republicans and Democrats over what is, relative to his other requests, a small amount of savings ($16 billion if you remove the earmarks from the bill).”

He goes on to say that this proves Obama simply isn’t willing to waste his political capital on this fight. For Dickerson, this seems to be a case of him working in doublespeak.

The nub of the problem is found later in the article, when Dickerson writes: “it’s hard for a president who uses the language of moral absolutes to embrace relativity.” Here’s the thing. Obama explicitly DOESN’T speak in moral absolutes. That’s his whole thing! That’s the point of his “change” – it’s about the refusal to treat anything as an absolute value, against which all other considerations must be sacrificed.

Politics as usual is when people become so committed to a concept that they ignore workability in favor of ranting and raving. It’s when they toss aside considerations about what their actions might do because they believe that the value they hold is so pure that it simply cannot be compromised. And yet, somehow, that’s precisely what Dickerson seems to expect from Obama. In this instance, he seems to be arguing:

Obama’s saying we should do hard things. But he’s not willing to tear apart the entire budget writing process for the sake of a few billion dollars. Hypocrite!

That’s what makes the obsession over earmarks so stupid in the first place. Yes, it would be nice if they didn’t exist. But they do serve an actual purpose. And blowing up the whole budget, re-starting from scratch over the sake of $16 billion dollars would be certifiably insane in a moment when we have FAR bigger fish to fry.

Remember that this isn’t Obama’s budget for next year. It’s the leftover budget from last year, which authorizes spending for the current year, and which was the subject of literally months and months of haggling, negotiation, and fighting to get it to the point where it’s ready to be voted on.

Finally, this issue of spending, there’s another way that Dickerson’s insistence on reading things in a black and white fashion produces a ridiculous conclusion. Premise 1: Obama admits that long-term deficits are important. Premise 2: The spending bill spends money, sometimes on things that Dickerson thinks are silly. Premise 3: Hypocrisy!

He even uses an analogy of a diet, saying: “Imagine if your diet worked this way: Before you start on your 28-day purge, you may consume the remaining food in your pantry.” But here’s the thing. We’re NOT GOING ON A DIET FROM SPENDING.

The entire point is that our current situation is far more at risk of deflationary spirals than it is of inflation. We currently need the government to spend money, and lots of it to fill in the missing demand. The need for fiscal restraint is ONLY a long-term consideration. The risk there is that we might ramp up demand but do so in a fashion that will be unsustainable for the long term because it will drive inflationary pressure, and will continue to be built on the back of NEEDING to finance our whole economy through debt.

That’s why Obama is talking about things like the savings from ending the war in Iraq, or the massive savings that will come over the long term from reforming the health care system to cut costs and ease the concern over the growth of entitlement spending. These are actions that free up HUGE amounts of money and do so in a way that communicates the long-term credibility and health of the US economy.

Put simply: government spending right now is, on balance, good. Obviously it would be better to spend it on efficient projects, but Dickerson provides no evidence that the “pork” in the bill won’t have a stimulative effect. Moreover, his apparent demand that Obama kill this bill in favor of a “pork-free” one would have the very tangible effect of delaying all the good spending in the bill by a long time.

The point to all this is that while there is a lot of utility in identifying the places where Obama is following through on his promises, there’s no point at all in fetishizing change to such an extent that you engage in the sort of false equivalencies that Dickerson has been peddling lately. Particularly when there’s a lot of real issues that Obama actually promised to change (like health care, energy, torture), as opposed to the changes that the DC establishment types wish he was working on. Want to write a story about how he’s continuing some of the troubling Bush practices on executive power? Great. But don’t sell your own personal interests as the change that somehow Obama is now responsible for.