Hats off to Barack H. Obama, the 44th President of the United States of America. (feels so good to say it)

He promised transparency in government and has started to deliver on day one. Obama welcomes senior staff in his administration, and the key message is ethics and transparency. It sounds surreal, and too good to be true. (I wanted to paste a few short snippets. But, it ended up this long.)

And you will receive an ethics briefing on what is required of you to make sure that our government is serving the people's interests, and nobody else's -- a briefing, I'm proud to say, I was the first member of this administration to receive last week.

But the way to make a government responsible is not simply to enlist the services of responsible men and women, or to sign laws that ensure that they never stray. The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable. And the way to make government accountable is make it transparent so that the American people can know exactly what decisions are being made, how they're being made, and whether their interests are being well served.

The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed. That era is now over. Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known.

I will also hold myself as President to a new standard of openness. Going forward, anytime the American people want to know something that I or a former President wants to withhold, we will have to consult with the Attorney General and the White House Counsel, whose business it is to ensure compliance with the rule of law. Information will not be withheld just because I say so. It will be withheld because a separate authority believes my request is well grounded in the Constitution.

Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.

Our commitment to openness means more than simply informing the American people about how decisions are made. It means recognizing that government does not have all the answers, and that public officials need to draw on what citizens know. And that's why, as of today, I'm directing members of my administration to find new ways of tapping the knowledge and experience of ordinary Americans -- scientists and civic leaders, educators and entrepreneurs -- because the way to solve the problem of our time is -- the way to solve the problems of our time, as one nation, is by involving the American people in shaping the policies that affect their lives.

Change.gov

The Obama campaign always hinted that if elected, they would channel their enthusiastic netroots support to communicate with the people and govern. Well, here is the time now. http://Change.gov is now online. Pretty quick.

Mixed returns on election night

Contests that I was interested in, and their results:

• McCain (R) v. Obama (D), Pennsylvania (rooting for Obama)
  • Obama wins Pennsylvania, wins Ohio, the next President of the United States.
• Prop 8, California constitution amendment, (No on Prop 8)
  • Prop 8 passes. I found it ironic that on a day when an African-American became President for the first time in US history, Blacks voted to strip gays of their right to marry.
• Norm Coleman (R) v. Al Franken (D), Minnesota Senate (Franken)
  • Franken trails by 762 votes, out of nearly 2.9 million cast. There will be a recount for the results to become official.
• BJ Lawson (R) v. Somebody, North Carolina 4th district (Lawson). Based on early voting numbers, he will clearly lose.
  • Poor guy, lost badly.
• Sean Tevis (D) v. Somebody, Kansas State Representative in District 15 (Tevis). Tevis is the xkcd comic strip candidate.
  • Tevis lost a close race.
• Prop 2, City of Austin. Just confused and what to know what this issue is about. This issue is making a lot of noise in Austin.
  • Prop 2 did not pass. 52% against, 48% for.
• Montana presidential election. How many does Ron Paul get.
  • Ron Paul got about 2%.

What polls I will be watching.

• McCain (R) v. Obama (D), Pennsylvania (rooting for Obama)
• Prop 8, California constitution amendment, (No for Prop 8)
• Norm Coleman (R) v. Al Franken (D), Minnesota Senate (Franken)
• BJ Lawson (R) v. Somebody, North Carolina 4th district (Lawson). Based on early voting numbers, he will clearly lose.
• Sean Tevis (D) v. Somebody, Kansas State Representative in District 15 (Tevis). Tevis is the xkcd comic strip candidate.
• Prop 2, City of Austin. Just confused and what to know what this issue is about. This issue is making a lot of noise in Austin.
• Montana presidential election. How many does Ron Paul get.

The first results from New Hampshire are already in, Ron Paul (write-in) got two votes out of 29.

The two false choices in America

Broadly put, politics in America is a clash between two ideological camps --- conservatives and progressives. While there are varying positions on numerous social and economic issues, people and parties are forced into of one these two groups (on all issues). These two ideologies respectively, are now supported by the two main parties: Republican and Democratic. "Tax and spend liberals" make the Democratic party of "big government". "Fiscal conservatives" make the Republican party of "small government".

This classification, in my opinion, is utterly false. A recent exchange between Barack Obama and "Joe the Plumber" exemplifies this myth.

Let me not pick on Joe, but he is clearly representative of the Republican party's ardent supporters. He uses talking points like "redistribution of wealth", and "Obama is a socialist".

Now, to my actual point. Obama and "Joe the Plumber" are discussing Obama's tax plan where he proposes to increase the tax rate for individuals and small businesses making above $ 250,000 from 36% to 39%. 39% was the rate during Bill Clinton (D), and Bush (R) cut it down. (It is a different story that national debt grew during Bush, and all Republicans were carrying his water.)

In the video, they are pretty much haggling over the merits of a 3% rate increase on additional profit above $ 250,000. Somehow, a 36% tax rate is not "socialist" but a 39% rate is. What the role of government should be, is an important discussion to have. It is however disingenuous (or plain stupid) to support Republicans because they are fiscal conservatives. There is hardly any ideological difference between the two parties when it comes to fiscal responsibility.

Obama's Momma

I was moved when I read a few months ago, this article about Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. I thought I'd share this with others. Dunham overcame various odds and lived an inspiring life serving others.

The entire article is riveting. Here are few excerpts that I liked.

Ann had already done things most women of her generation had not: she had married an African, had their baby and gotten divorced. At this juncture, her life could have become narrower --- young, marginalized woman focused on paying the rent and raising a child on her own. She could have filled her son's head with well-founded resentment for his absent father. But that is not what happened.

[...]

Ann's most lasting professional legacy was to help build the microfinance program in Indonesia, which she did from 1988 to '92 --- before the practice of granting tiny loans to credit-poor entrepreneurs was an established success story. Her anthropological research into how real people worked helped inform the policies set by the Bank Rakyat Indonesia, says Patten, an economist who worked there. "I would say her work had a lot to do with the success of the program," he says. Today Indonesia's microfinance program is No. 1 in the world in terms of savers, with 31 million members, according to Microfinance Information eXchange Inc., a microfinance-tracking outfit.

[...]

In 1992, Obama's mother finally finished her Ph.D. dissertation, which she had worked on, between jobs, for almost two decades. The thesis is 1,000 pages, a meticulous analysis of peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia. The glossary, which she describes as "far from complete," is 24 pages. She dedicated the tome to her mother; to Dewey, her adviser; "and to Barack and Maya, who seldom complained when their mother was in the field."

I am one of millions of people "deluded by Barack Obama". In this post I attempt to make the case for Obama, on why he should be the forty fourth President of the United States.

Integrity

My perception of a candidate's integrity might not be a true reflection of who they are. With that being said, it is without question that Obama has exuded a higher standard of personal and political integrity. While Ron Paul is by far the most honest candidate left, Obama compares favorably to the others with a realistic chance --- John McCain and Hillary Clinton. One does not have to go far back in time to see Clinton's lack of integrity. She cemented her reputation for "doing anything for the sake of power" in this campaign. She set up members of the audience to ask questions; lied about Obama's statements on Ronald Reagan; lied about his position on the Iraq war; the list is endless. In this respect, John McCain seems to be a tougher nut to crack, only because he is a self-styled "straight talker" and a "maverick". In reality, McCain is just another politician. Way back in 1989 he was tainted in the Savings and Loan crisis scandal. When he speaks, he says what is more convenient to him, rather than what he believes in. TheRealMcCain documents McCain's double-talk and flip-flops. Just to be clear, Obama is not spotless, but he seems too innocent to be able to manage organized corruption the others done all these years.

Experience

If experience is measured by age, the old man wins. If elected, McCain would become the oldest president. In contrast, Obama would be among the youngest.

Does experience/age matter in a president? History fails to provide a conclusive answer. We have to look at one's achievements. McCain is famous for authoring various pieces of legislation related to ethics and campaign reform. Clinton and Obama do not have the same kind of name recognition associated with big-ticket legislations. Nevertheless, Obama has sent a clear message on where his priorities lie by introducing Obama-Coburn which is expected to bring a lot of transparency into government spending. To his credit, this act was passed unanimously in the Senate. (USASpending.gov is a starting point that implements this act, and Obama has promised more to come.) Clinton has fewer years in elected office than Obama. Her record during Obama's Senate tenure is pathetic, to be generous. Obama in his young life has accomplished a lot --- working as a grassroots community organizer; important civil rights legislations in the Illinois Senate; a short but shining Senate career. Based on competence exhibited during this presidential campaign alone, he wins hands-down over both McCain and Clinton.

The issues

I am one who does not believe in ideologies. I prefer people and solutions over principles. To bring an analogy from the field of programming; while ideologues are busy debating whether to use functional programming or imperative programming, the astute programmer picks the right solution for the task in hand, and might even use a combination of the two styles to get the work done. The people are let out to hang dry, when politicians debate conservative and progressive ideologies. Obama has promised to unite people on both sides of the aisle by sticking to fact and reason, something that others have not.

While the conventional wisdom is that free markets and less government intervention is good, one cannot bulldoze a solution on people just because it carries the name "free trade" in it. The case in point is NAFTA. (Amit Varma's criticism of Obama's position on NAFTA prompted me to write about this, and the entire article.) The consensus is NAFTA has resulted in the loss of more jobs (within the US) than it has helped the economy. It has helped the corporations more than the people, which is what all free-market proponents in the past (including Adam Smith) warned against. NAFTA is not a "free trade" agreement. It is a "managed" trade agreement that screws the common man. When Ron Paul, the most vocal of free market cheerleaders denounces NAFTA, it deserves a better look.

Obama has been criticized that he is too progressive. The trickle-down economics theory which Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43 have followed have all failed the country. They all failed to have balanced budgets. Only Clinton succeeded in the past thirty years. It doesn't take an economist to just read the numbers and conclude that people sticking up for political ideology have failed the people. It is imprudent to perform a risky experiment on 300 million people overlooking past history. If raising taxes is what is needed to keep the deficit down, a President must do that and Obama stands on what I consider is the right side of this issue.

Change

Rajeev Srinivasan in his Rediff article asks

All very nice, but exactly what is he going to change?

Is Obama going to immediately pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan? That would be disastrous, conceding victory to the fundamentalists. Is Obama going to bring in universal health care? His proposals are impractical: Clinton's plan is much more sensible. Is Obama going to single-handedly rescue the recession-bound American economy? Unlikely, given the structural damage of the housing bubble, the excesses of the banking industry and years of over-consumption and under-saving.

Is Obama going to change American foreign policy so that the US stops supporting dictators like Pakistan's Musharraf? Unlikely, as the status quo ante helps certain American interests. Is Obama going to immediately reverse the decline in American education and competitiveness? It would be very interesting to hear how he will do that, other than through rhetoric. Is Obama going to move away from depending on Saudi petro-dollars?

Before I talk about what Obama wants to change, let me point out some thing. "His proposals are impractical: Clinton's plan is much more sensible". Hmm, I am really curious. I do not have the motivation to read their long healthcare plans (here and here) and evaluate them on their merits. Based on what I picked from the various debates, I could not gather enough information to decide. Maybe Rajeev could enlighten me on why Clinton's is more "sensible". I am not being pejorative, just curious. I am yet to come across any article that does that.

Now, back to what I wanted to say. Rajeev mentions the various problems facing the US that are the result of policies and attitudes shaped over several years. What seems like a scathing indictment of Obama, stops being so when you replace Obama with Clinton or McCain. The next president has to tackle these challenges.

Obama does not advocate radical changes in policy (only Ron Paul did so, in the campaign). He wants to change the way politics is done. He wants to reduce the influence of lobbyists and special interests, get the people involved by throwing sunlight into the policy-making and make them get what is beneficial to the people. (Obama answers this question in this Candidates@Google video. Move to 57:00 in this video). He succinctly started of by saying, "You have got to use shame", and elaborates how he plans to use transparency to get the American people to watch the process and negate special-interests. McCain who surrounds himself with lobbyists and Clinton who calls lobbyists representative of "real people" cannot be trusted to stand up for average Joe.

Conclusion

The President is not expected to a Chief Operating Officer. He or she has to listen to people's concerns, set high standards for integrity, set the right vision, provide the opportunity and inspire people to act on that vision. At his worst, Obama will end up being yet another President of the United States. At his best, he will inspire a whole new generation of Americans to believe in themselves to stand up to the challenges facing the country. The thousands who attend his rallies, and the one million people who have donated small amounts to his campaign offer testimony to the fact that he is an inspiring personality. This grassroots enthusiasm (and not a President) is what will eventually change America, if at all that happens. Inspiring the grassroots is not something Clinton and McCain can lay a claim to, at least in my opinion.