DECEMBER IN NOVEMBER:

Listen To The Decemberists Live (XPN All About the Music)

WXPN and NPR Music are broadcasting/webcasting The Decemberists live in concert from the Electric Factory in Philly Friday night (um, that's tomorrow) at 9PM Eastern.

MORE:
INTERNET ARCHIVES: The Decembrists
The Decemberists Soar with 'Crane Wife' Live (NPR.org, October 31, 2006)

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HISTORY ENDS EVEN FOR SHEEP:

New Falklands constitution agreed (BBC, 11/07/08)

A new constitution for the Falklands has been agreed which the UK government says will "enhance local democracy" for the south Atlantic islands' residents.

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HAMASTAN BY BULLET OR BY BALLOT?:

Fatah and Hamas in unity government talks (Rory McCarthy, November 7 2008, The Guardian)

The rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah will meet in Cairo on Sunday for the first time in more than a year in an Egyptian-led effort to agree a unified government and end their divisions.

Egyptian officials have prepared an outline deal that would include a "national reconciliation government", but it is short on details and could take weeks of negotiation. [...]

The talks will centre on establishing a government with the goal of ending the economic siege of Gaza, reforming the security forces under a national leadership and preparing for fresh presidential and parliamentary elections.

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SOMEBODY HIDE MR. DAWKINS'S GINSU SET:

Creationism should be taught as science, say 29% of teachers (James Randerson, November 7 2008, The Guardian)

Twenty-nine per cent of teachers believe that creationism and intelligent design should be taught as science, according to an online survey of attitudes to teaching evolution in the UK. Nearly 50% of the respondents said they believed that excluding alternatives to evolution was counter-productive and would alienate pupils from science.

The survey, by the website and TV station Teachers TV, also found strong support for the views of Prof Michael Reiss, the former director of education at the Royal Society, who resigned in September over comments about including creationism in science lessons.

Nearly nine in 10 respondents agreed with Reiss that teachers should engage with pupils who raise creationism or intelligent design in science lessons.

They're wrong, of course, creationism is no more a science than are Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

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WAS HE APPOINTED TO THE PRESS SECRETARY JOB?:

Rahm Emanuel, Press Tamer: What to expect as Clinton's enforcer becomes Obama's chief of staff. (Jack Shafer, Nov. 6, 2008, Slate)

Writing in Slate in 1996, Jacob Weisberg described Emanuel as perhaps "the [Clinton] administration's most diabolically effective tactician" and credited him as being "largely responsible for moving the Clinton campaign beyond mere 'rapid response' to pre-emptive strikes—engineering, for instance, Clinton's endorsement by the Fraternal Order of Police on the day Bob Dole was set to launch a major attack on the president's crime record."

Bumiller writes that after Clinton won in 1992, his advisers, including Emanuel, met at Doe's Eat Place to discuss taking revenge on journalists (and others) who had wronged the during the campaign. Even so, Emanuel appears to be a proud member of the "F*** you—let's go to lunch" school of press management. William Safire, who called Hillary Clinton "a congenital liar" in 1996, may have earned White House enemy status, but to Emanuel, the columnist was "Uncle Bill," Kurtz writes, and Emanuel "even had Safire over for dinner." Michael Kelly of the New Republic won a lunch date with Emanuel for calling Clinton "a shocking liar," "occasional demagogue," and worse. (Note to White House reporters: For a face-to-face with Emanuel, write the most scathing thing you can about Obama.)

Emanuel games everybody and everything, so the press shouldn't take it personally—and it won't. In fact, as I write, the White House press corps is doing whippits in celebration of his appointment. The Obama campaign famously kept the press at arm's length. Emanuel, on the other hand, can't shut up. (Whose fault do you think it is that the whole world knew for days that Emanuel had been offered the chief of staff job but couldn't make up his mind?)

The Obama campaign provided the press with no internal drama, forcing reporters to intuit the real agenda. Emanuel, on the other hand, is a drama queen; seething, foaming Mamet production; a big mouth; and a calculating mensch who loves nothing more than to stoke the feed bag for press-corps noshers.

Okay, so it's a good appointment for the Right--because Mr. Emmanuel is a New Democrat--it's a good appointment for Israel--where Mr. Emmanuel volunteered during Gulf I--and it's a good appointment for the press--because he'll leak like Dick Darman. But is it a good appointment for Barack Obama and the country generally? It doesn't seem to be.

MORE:
How To Run A White House: A Bush chief of staff offers advice for Obama (Katie Paul, 11/06/08, NEWSWEEK)

NEWSWEEK caught up with President Bush's first White House chief of staff, Andy Card—who might be characterized as Emanuel's temperamental opposite—to get his insights into the trials and tribulations of the job. Card took his share of lumps, but he lasted longer than all but one other White House chief of staff.

NEWSWEEK: Does the chief of staff need to have the thickest skin in Washington?

Andy Card: Yes. You have to have a steely resolve, thick skin, a velvet glove, a listening ear—and you have to be decisive. There will be scores of people clamoring for your attention on any given day; probably about 20 to 30 in the White House, another 20 to 30 members of Congress. And in terms of the media—well, they're insatiable, so I would take my direction from the press secretary. Probably about 10 percent of the cabinet on any given day is scratching at your door. Develop some priorities and delegate, because it's a grueling job, a 24/7 job. I think [current chief of staff] Josh Bolten does a better job at it than I did.

What's the single most important aspect of the job to get right?

Earn and keep the trust of the president. Those are two different statements. Don't talk about things you shouldn't be talking about, beyond what the president tells you. Remember that you're serving the president and the First Lady, not a constituency. You're not only there to help the president do his job, but you are also responsible for protecting the institution of the presidency—and sometimes, those will appear to be in conflict.

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MURROW WEPT (via Rick Turley):

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NOTHING LEFT TO DO BUT WAIT FOR THEIR PONIES (via Bruno Behrend):

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

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WHAT A DELICIOUS IRONY...:

Obama's Real Opposition: Presidents come and go; Congressional barons are forever. (Wall Street Journal, 11/06/08)

Now that Barack Obama has vanquished John McCain, he faces a much greater foe: Democrats on Capitol Hill. They've humbled the last two Democratic Presidents -- and with their enhanced majorities next year, they'll be out to do it again.
[Review & Outlook] AP

Mr. Obama may appreciate the threat, because yesterday he offered Clinton White House veteran Rahm Emanuel a job as his chief of staff. But even that savvy, relatively sane liberal will have difficulties grappling with the fearsome committee chairmen and liberal interest groups that did so much to sabotage Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Meet the President-elect's real opposition...

...when Barack Obama vetoes more bills this term than W did with his two years of a Democrat Congress.

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1994 ALL OVER AGAIN:

Democrats Win 18 More House Seats (Perry Bacon Jr., 11/06/08, Washington Post)

While some analysts had suggested that Democrats could gain more than 30 seats, the party appeared to have fallen short of that, but it will approach the total of 259 seats it held in 1994 before Republicans seized control of Congress that fall.

A lot has been written n the past two days about how this election proves there's no longer a Bradley/Wilder Effect, but Mr. Obama and Democrats underperformed expectations enough to make you wonder.

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DOES THIS MEAN NO PONIES? (via The Wife):

Obama Aides Tamp Down Expectations (ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG, 11/06/08, NY Times)

President-elect Barack Obama has begun an effort to tamp down what his aides fear are unusually high expectations among his supporters, and will remind Americans regularly throughout the transition that the nation’s challenges are substantial and will take time to address. [...]

“I don’t think they view him as a miracle worker who in two months is going to solve an economic crisis,” Mr. Benenson said.

He told them his election would make the oceans recede.

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• What Obama does next: the presidential transition FAQ.

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SUPPOSE FOR A SECOND....:

Barack's Enforcer (Martin Sieff, 11/06/08, Daily Beast)

The president-elect's first choice for chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel—a pro business quasi neocon whose middle name is Israel—gives the lie to the wildest myths Obama's opponents spread about him in the campaign.

President-elect Barack Obama’s offer to Rahm Emanuel of the job of chief of staff tells more about how he intends to run the White House than his uplifting campaign rhetoric about post-partisan niceness. The selection of Emanuel signals that he apparently wants to operate with ideological moderation, speed and skull-cracking political toughness. [...]

Making Emanuel chief of staff—and putting the word out the day after his historic election victory—tells Washington that Obama is going to push through his political and policy agenda Chicago-style—not the San Francisco way. For Emanuel is going to be Obama’s Karl Rove and John Sununu, Sr. combined.

...that we can put partisanship aside and hope that an Obama presidency is a success and a good thing for America. Mr. Emmanuel's politics and the signal in that regard are reassuring, but the entirely legitimate comparison to John Sununu is worrisome. He was not a good chief of staff and apponting a guy who not only isn't likely to be good at his own job but who you expect to run Congress from the White House seems a recipe for disaster.

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THE AMERICAN ECONOMY, WHERE EVERY SURPRISE IS PREDICTABLE:

U.S. Productivity Increases 1.1%, Proving Resilient (BRIAN BLACKSTONE, 11/06/08, Wall Street Journal)

U.S. productivity was surprisingly resilient last quarter despite a steep drop in output, as companies responded quickly to the economic downturn by shedding labor.

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NOW LET'S SEE OUR MONEY:

Obama's deft and misleading tax-cut plan (Donald Lambro, November 6, 2008, Washington Times)

Those who think conservatism is dead need to look at how Barack Obama skillfully played the tax cut issue like a Stradivarius. [...]

Mr. Obama knew, as Bill Clinton knew, that he had to find a way to trump the tax cut issue that Republicans had used effectively in election after election and that continued to galvanize voters across the board.

So he devised a plan, like Mr. Clinton, that called for raising taxes on the top 5 percent of American income earners, but offered a $500 to $1,000 refundable tax credit for low- to middle-income taxpayers. [...]

When the race was nearly over, polls showed more Americans believed he was going to lower their taxes than those who said Mr. McCain would lower them more.

"He's been very careful about how he framed his tax position and has bent over backwards not to allow himself to be tagged as a liberal on the tax issue," said Michael Franc, a vice president and policy strategist at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

MORE:
America still a centre-right country (Gerard Baker, November 06, 2008, Times of London)

[W]hen you think of the macro-political conditions in America in 2008, you are left wondering why the Democrats did not do significantly better.

The US is in its deepest recession in a generation. For the first time in its history a catastrophic financial crisis erupted right in the middle of a general election campaign, one that fatally undermined the incumbent party. An unpopular war in Iraq has destroyed the Republican Party's reputation for national security reliability. The exit poll found that 76 per cent of respondents thought that the country was on the wrong track. Democrats outspent Republicans by two-to-one. It is hard to imagine how circumstances could ever be much better for the Democrats.

Even as Senator Obama's party was winning votes across the country, people were expressing strong support for conservative policies. In the most-watched ballot initiatives (plebiscites) on social issues in many states, there was little sign of a radical new beginning.

Voters in California, Florida and Arizona supported constitutional amendments to outlaw gay marriage. Voters in Arkansas banned adoption by unmarried couples. In Nebraska a measure to end affirmative action in state hiring practices passed easily.

Most remarkable of all, for all the transformation in US politics wrought by the last four years, Americans themselves do not seem to have undergone any great ideological conversion.

In 2004 exit pollsters asked voters how they would identify their politics. The answers were 21 per cent liberal (Left) 45 per cent moderate and 34 per cent conservative. On this election day, the same question elicited these responses: 22 per cent liberal; 44 per cent moderate and 34 per cent conservative.

President Obama and his jubilant supporters in Congress will surely not need reminding that this is still a centre-right country.

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TOP OF THE TICKET BLUES:

Blue Hampshire: A passing phase? (KATHY McCORMACK, 11/06/08, Associated Press)

[A]llan Racklin, who teaches sociology at Franklin Pierce University, isn't ready to call New Hampshire blue. He said he would wait another election cycle or two and see if the anti-Bush phenomenon wears off before he even considers the question.

"Even in terms of the intensity of the blue, it's a mix of candidates in terms of what kinds of Democratic principles, or shade of Democrat we have," he said. For example, he said, Senate winner Jeanne Shaheen "is at best a moderate, very moderate, very tentative Democrat. A generation or two ago she would have fit very nicely into the moderate wing of the Republican Party."

Wayne Lesperance, who teaches political science at New England College, also says it's too early to tell.

"What's going to be really important is to see what happens in two years," he said. "If we accept the argument that so much of the success for people like (U.S. Rep.) Carol Shea-Porter and Jeanne Shaheen is attributable to Barack Obama's candidacy, what happens in two years in the case of Carol Shea-Porter if she has to run again, (and U.S. Rep.) Paul Hodes if he has to run again? Is that same level of support going to be there? ... This Democratic groundswell, is it sustainable?"

Jennifer Donahue of Saint Anselm College's Institute of Politics expects the state to move back and forth politically depending on what voters are experiencing in a given election cycle.

The implosion of ex-Governor Craig Benson (R) and the conservatism of Governor John Lynch (D) has given the Democrats a very strong top of the ticket in a state where the governor is up for election every two years. The GOP would benefit from John Sununu taking a run at governor in '10.

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• It's One of Those Seats the Presidential Will Determine:
• Now If You Flatlanders Would Just Pull Your Weight:
• Democrat Shea-Porter Struggling to Hold NH Seat

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THE LIBERAL MOMENT?:

Latest polls point to a National-led government (NZ Herald, Nov 06, 2008)

Two opinion polls out tonight signal a National-led government is on the cards after election day.

A One News Colmar Brunton Poll and TV3's TNS Poll both have National with a respective 13 point lead and 12 point lead over Labour - two days from the election.

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DO THEY KNOW WHAT A CHIEF OF STAFF DOES?:

Rahm Emanuel enjoys being the bad guy: The Illinois congressman, Obama's pick to be White House chief of staff, is best known as something of a Democratic political assassin. (Naftali Bendavid, November 6, 2008, LA Times)

Perhaps precisely because Obama seems likely to adopt a unifying posture as president, he may need someone practiced in the art of political hardball.

Republican strategist John Feehery -- who worked for former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and former House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel as well as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- said Emanuel could help prevent House Democrats from overreaching.

"He understands that if Obama goes too far to the left, it's not going to be good for the Democrats," Feehery said. "I think he's the kind of guy who can knock some heads and help Obama guide the Congress toward the middle. . . . You will need a bad cop to Obama's good cop, and Rahm will fill that role quite nicely."

Emanuel's policies, unlike his politics, have always been centrist, in the Bill Clinton mold. In addition, a different Emanuel has emerged in recent years, one who has forged friendships with Republicans and shown an ability to work with them on occasion.

That's an argument to make Mr. Emmanuel your House whip, not your chief.

Mr. Obama's initial governing choices--Joe Biden and Rahm Emmanuel--don't inspire confidence that he'll be a good executive.

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NOW THEY NOTICE?:

Campaign Gives Some Clues to How Obama Will Govern (Dan Balz, 11/06/08, Washington Post)

President-elect Barack Obama proved one of the most formidable political candidates of the modern era, but his résumé is one of the shortest of any recent incoming president, and so knowing for sure the kind of chief executive he will make is something that will have to wait until he takes office in January.

Obama has not had to demonstrate his skills as a negotiator with balky members of Congress. He has met with foreign leaders, but little is known about how he would handle himself in such gatherings. He has faced no crisis akin to what a president can expect. He has steadfastly resisted outlining how the dramatically altered economic and fiscal environment will affect his governing agenda. He has skirted some of the tough questions he'll face in the early weeks of his presidency, particularly on spending.

We had to wait until November 6th for Mr. Balz to realize that the senate trio have no executive experience? Proud performance for the media this cycle, eh?

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