There has been a lot of discussion recently about Barack Obama's move to "the center." The concern as Ariana Huffington explains in a post on HuffPost is that by doing so Obama threatens to alienate his core supporters, legitimizes many of the right-wing policies that have bankrupted this nation, and most pressingly, this approach did not work for either Al Gore or John Kerry, Obama's predecessors as Democratic nominee.  Writing for the New York Times yesterday, Bob Herbert is even more critical:

But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.

Obama's move to the center is Clintonian in approach and it remains to be seen whether it will also be Clintonian in affect, thereby garnering him a November victory. What is surprising about Obama's decision to borrow from the Clinton playbook is that unlike Clinton who succeeded two Republican administrations, and battled a Rebuplican candidate in 1992, George H.W. Bush, who voters were merely agnostic about whether he stayed in office, unlike the current Bush who Obama would succeed, and who voters vehemently want out of office. Moreover, Clinton went toward the center because back then the right wing had strong and competent figures like James Baker, Bob Dole and Jesse Helms who were masterful at enacting a right wing agenda at home and abroad. Clinton knew that Dole and Helms would have an inordinate amount of sway in determining his fate, and while their allegiance to Bush Sr. was slim, their conviction to the principles of their party was not.

By contrast, one would be hard pressed to find a Republican figure who currently holds as much sway as the aforementioned Republicans. The most powerful right wing members in office these days are not even politicians, but instead are supreme court justices Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Roberts and Scalia in particular have become more aware of their power and this past year opened up to the public in ways that they had not done earlier in their careers. Additionally, while Republicans walk around announcing themselves as conservatives like frat-boys enamored by their fraternities acronym, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas have become the right-wing's political conscience, and in so doing have set the stage for the Supreme Court to become more reflective of this nation's political conscience than either the legislative or executive branches of government.

Case in point in the last five years we have seen a President initiate an unjust war without any sensible debate, and last month we witnessed a presidential candidate undo his opponent's signature piece of legislation by simply sending an email out to his supporters announcing that he will not accept public campaign financing. On the other hand, we also took part in a judicious debate on Affirmative Action that while it repealed some of the program's initial gains, the inclusion of so many stakeholders in the process to determine the program's fate prevented a far worse outcome.

Bringing this back to Obama's move to the center, it is a risky strategy because so much of what was once termed "the right" is now ensconced in the supreme court. Senate conservatives are a gaggle of contradictions without a party leader capable of mobilizing them. Dubya's war upended republican tenets of fiscal conservatism, and unleashed a conservative movement that as Mitt Romney learned during this year's primary hinders the prospects of successful republican politicians who are not in line with the grossly over-hyped Christian right. Ironically, the only republican senator capable of making Obama or any other Democratic candidate veer to the center is John McCain. However instead of undoing some of the damage done by Bush and Karl Rove, McCain has decided to prostitute himself to Bush and Rove's backers thereby further delegitimizing this nation's right wing and their agenda. Writing for The New Republic, Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, have renamed McCain, "McContradiction," continuing a theme that has plagued the Republican nominee throughout his presidential bid.

McCain's desperate flailing for a conservative port to parachute into suggest that arguments proclaiming a right wing movement are not to be taken lightly during this campaign season. It also suggests that after twenty years of seeking to define themselves as centrists, democratic politicians would do well to recognize that save for flirtations with the Green Party, the left has not been mobilized to the same degree as their counterparts on the right in a general election, and were there any year to do this, this would be the year.

Yes. We. Can.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending Edwidge Danticat's presentation at the second annual Toni Morrison Lecture at Princeton University.  The title of Ms. Danticat's presentation was "Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work."  Ms. Danticat delivered an exceptional lecture layered with allusiions Albert Camus, Sophocles, and Toni Morrison.  Each allusion, each citiation, each anecdote facilitated a return back to her central theme, the capacity for and necessity of artists to "create dangerously for people who read dangerously."

Ms. Danticat began her talk by referencing Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin two members of Jeune Haiti, thirteen Haitian expatriots who returned to Haiti in 1964 intent on overthrowing then dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier.  Numa and Drouin were publicly executed in Haiti's capital, Port au Prince, as a reminder to others who might be considering forming an insurgency against Duvalier.  In their coverage of this execution for a November 27, 1964 article entitled "A Warning to Renegades" Time Magazine editors invoke language that would have been eerily familiar to an audience familiar with atrocities occuring throughout the American South:

To guarantee an S.R.O crowd for their execution, Duvalier ordered all businesses closed and schools let out; backland peasants were trucked into Port-au-Prince.  As TV cameras recorded the scene, a black and white jeep pulled up to the cemetery, and out stepped the two victims.  They were tied tightly to two pine stakes. 

This "scrupulously respected" traditional proceeding mirrors lynching scenes that scarred this nation for over a century bringing to bear strange fruit on its flora and fauna.  By beginning with this image Danticat brought the listener's attention to what is sometimes at stake for artists creating dangerously in dangerous environments.  Both Numa and Douin were poets, and while it was not their poetry lead to their execution, the knowledge-what we might call consciousness-that these two men developed through reading and writing prompted them to identify this particular quest-overthrowing Duvalier-as their seminal/great work. 

As Ms. Danticat also points out creating dangerously is not simply a life and death matter.  Salvation and myth offered by death avails itself to fewer artists than we imagine, more likely than not creating dangerously requires managing inner personal conflicts and the responsibility of fulfilling one's role as an advocate for others.  In essence, we can concede that each day is not guaranteed therefore with each breathe one risks their lives, but can we take the risk and responsibility of saving someone else's.  Ms. Danticat uses her own attempts at getting her uncle released from the INS detention center in 2004, which she recently chronicled in Brother I'm Dying, as an example of how an artist can find themselves struggling to save the life of another.  Medical doctors are trained knowing that they will not be able to save everyone they set out to help, but artists receive no such training-we speak in hopes that someone will listen and help us fulfill the charge of a particular appeal.

In this vein, Ms. Danticat's quest to save her uncle's life recalls Ida B. Wells' quest to end lynching in the United States.  History compelled these women to write dangerously for people who's lives were in danger.  To that end Danticat's vision of the immigrant artist recalls Wells' crusade as an itinerant journalist in search of justice, and quests udertaken by women such as Athena, Nanny, and Harriet, and as such, these artists who created dangerously for people who lived dangerously, live on in the hearts and minds of their readers. 

Something peculiar happened during my most recent hotel stay.  Rather than simply telling me for future reference that I can use the computerized kiosk as she checked me in, the desk attendant walked me over to said kiosk, and proceeded to give me and a fellow straggler how to use this machine.  She then went back over to her desk to continue doing what she was doing before our arrival.  Her actions were clearly inspired by some new organizational protocol mandating that attendants teach guests how to check in or out of a hotel by using these kiosks. What made this instance unique is that since there was no one else available to usher incoming guests to this kiosk and tutor them on how to use it, it essentially took the desk attendant as much time to do all of this as it would have taken to simply check us in herself.  Although, this experience ranks far behind a fitful five minutes spent trying to get directions to a hotel, only to realize that the customer service representative I was speaking with was overseas and therefore unable to offer anything beyond the directions available on the website.  This combination of outsourcing and new wave self-service hospitality adds to an already uphill climb in this country’s attempts as keeping a well balanced and rewarding labor force.  

It also explains why presidential candidates are reluctant—if not articulate—when it comes to discussing this nation’s economic viability.  For example, in spite of how much Hillary Clinton cites her penchant for “specifics,” or Barack Obama promises to “move beyond the politics of the past,” they became embroiled in an economic policy squabble that was neither about specifics nor forward thinking initiatives on labor.  NAFTAgate was a return to 90s era bickering that has unfairly been deemed Clintonian in this year’s presidential race because of how it relieves republicans, most notably Newt Gingrich, of any culpability for what took place in the 90s.  

Similarly, John McCain is as guilty as Hillary Clinton in touting thirty plus years of political inexperience yet being unable to yield one resounding sound bite that succinctly characterizes their economic vision.  

All three remaining candidates litter their speeches with allusions to “jobs,” “good jobs,” and my personal favorite, “jobs that will allow you to put food on the table,” but never provide any insight to the nature of these jobs, and the sacrifices and behavior modifications that Americans will have to make in order to create and retain these new jobs.  

There has been an appalling lack of discussion about the investments that any of these candidates are willing to make to alleviate America’s thirty-year regression in science and math education and the vital role that remedying this situation will potentially play in bridging the gap between the Appalachian Valley and Silicon Valley.  Additionally, as Green Consciousness continues erupting in this country politicians have failed to realize that bicycles are the new cars, in the sense that they can offer a similar jolt to national and local economies in the 21st century that car manufacturing did in the 20th century.  Thinking creatively about making states such as Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada that are renowned for their moderate climes, but which are unnecessarily congested with cars, can potentially revitalize not only certain segments of this nation’s manufacturing sectors, but also an urban planning movement that has become mired in obstinate highways and luxury high rise building projects. Those leery that auto lobbyists will reject any such measures should consider the fact that transportation and spending are as much about habit as they are need.  People will not stop buying cars, or buy them at any less of a rate than we are currently purchasing them, we will simply buy them for different reasons.  

Finally, if by jobs they mean training home-health care aides and other assisted living professionals to take care of the baby boomers, then they need to explicitly say so, in order to insure that people are properly trained before entering these professions and to avoid sagging post boomer generations with mounting healthcare costs in order to underwrite malpractice and abuse claims against senior citizens homes.  

In other words, now that we know this primary season will at least go through April, and with reports indicating that job growth has stalled, Clinton, McCain and Obama may as well get down from their podiums and out from behind their advisors—even if like that hotel clerk in Philly—it may not necessarily serve them well in the long run.