Mr. Vice President, you write in your new book, "Our Choice," that we have at our fingertips all of the tools that we need to solve the climate crisis. The only missing ingredient would be collective will. What makes it so hard for governments to implement change even though most people know what needs to be done?
As human beings, we are vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable. In our everyday experience, if something has never happened before, we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future, but the exceptions can kill you and climate change is one of those exceptions. Neuroscientists point out that we are inherently better able to respond quickly to the kinds of threats that our evolutionary ancestors survived -- like other humans with weapons, snakes and spiders or fire. Also, there is a real-time lag between the causes of the climate crisis and its full manifestation. That makes it seem less urgent to many people.
But America always took pride in being faster and more flexible than other nations. Does that no longer apply?
America's political system has evolved over the last 50 years in ways that have enhanced the power of business lobbies. The power of television and of money has grown exponentially. Eighty percent of the campaign contributions that candidates and officials running for reelection raise and spend go to TV ads, so they are required to raise enormous amounts of money, mainly from business lobbies. In a way, that has "re-feudalized" the political power and it gave much more power to established interests. When Obama was elected, I said: "What an exciting moment in our history." But his election did not cure all of the problems in the American system.
Seventeen years ago you, a young senator from Tennessee, and Bill Clinton, a young governor from Arkansas, moved into the White House on the promise of change. Clinton played the saxophone and there was a feeling of spring in the air. Why has it been so much tougher for Barack Obama?
It was hard for us, too. Just remember the resistance to our healthcare reform bill. Obama's progress on healthcare has already surpassed what we were able to do on healthcare. He will get a climate change bill adopted. So I am optimistic. These are still the early days of the Obama presidency. He had a bad summer, but he is having a good fall.
Isn't it getting harder and harder to remain an optimist?
I think there is a realistic basis for optimism. The Internet empowers individuals to play a more active role in the political process, as Obama's campaign has manifested. They felt shut out of the conversation of democracy during the television age, but they are coming back. It is not an accident that virtually every progressive reform movement in the world is now based on the Internet. There are more than 1 million, perhaps as many as 2 million grass-roots organizations that have been established worldwide on the issue of the climate crisis, most of them on the Internet.
Obama's political opponents also rely on the Internet, though. Could the reason for the resistance to his government be his skin color? Former President Jimmy Carter said many Americans still have a problem with a black man in the White House.
There is no doubt that the issue of race is always present in American politics and in the politics of any multiracial society. There is also no doubt that for some people it is an element in the manifested hostility to Obama. But I don't think it is the major theme at all. Obama is right when he reminds people: By the way, I was black before the election.
Perhaps the aggressive reactions can be explained by the fact that he, you and large parts of the Democratic Party misinterpreted the will of voters. Perhaps the last election had less to do with a desire among voters to implement transformational change than just getting rid of Bush.
Isn't that all related? The Bush-Cheney administration had betrayed some basic American values. So there was hunger for change. The difficulties the new government has encountered are in the Congress, and they are connected to the growing influence of business lobbies and people who are simply afraid of government.
Is that a new phenomenon?
People in Congress listen less to each other. The Senate chamber, for example, is now commonly empty when speeches are made. That was different in the past and I know why it has changed. The chamber is empty now because the senators have to be at cocktail parties and fundraisers to raise money. They feel as if they have to spend virtually all their time raising money.
"It is realistic to expect a treaty"
Isn't Obama's plate too full? He conducts war in Iraq and Afghanistan, he wants to close Guantánamo, he is trying to reform the healthcare system, he is promising progress on climate change and wants to strengthen, almost in passing, the rights of trade unions and homosexuals. Isn't that too much change for a rather conservative country like the United States?
I disagree with that criticism. After eight years of retrogression, Obama would have been more bitterly criticized if he had chosen only one priority and had not tried to address the many challenges that need to be undertaken. So I do think there is a grain of truth to it, but I also know that his mandate was and is strongest at the beginning of his term.
But Obama hasn't achieved much so far -- most of the reforms he announced still haven't been implemented. Many people already call him a sweet talker -- all talk, but little action.
One of the tools that a president has is to command the attention of the American people. It has to be used judiciously. There is such a thing as overexposure when a president depreciates the welcome. I think it is too early to make that judgment. There have been times when I thought that President Obama maybe got close to that line -- for instance, with regard to his television interviews. But it is the most powerful tool he has to make his direct presentation to the people.
The financial crisis hasn't made the president's job any easier. Are times of material want fundamentally bad for reform politicians?
The climate, financial and national security crises are all connected. They share the same cause: Our absurd dependency on foreign oil. As long as we need to spend billions of dollars each year to buy foreign oil from state-run oil companies in the Persian Gulf, our problems of a trade deficit, a budget deficit and a climate crisis will persist. Therefore, more and more Americans begin to realize that the right response to the climate challenge will also help with the economy and a more balanced budget.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was less optimistic after the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh. She did not believe there would be a majority for a U.S. climate change law in Congress before the world climate summit in Copenhagen in December.
I am more optimistic. I do not think that we will have the final enactment of the Conference Committee Report in Congress before Copenhagen. But if President Obama is able to go to Copenhagen having passed legislation in the House and having passed it in the Senate, it will be inevitable that the legislation comes out even if the Conference Committee is still pending.
What are your expectations for Copenhagen ?
I think it is realistic to expect a treaty. It will not be as strong as I would like it to be. But it will put a price on carbon and change the forward planning of businesses and cities and states, provinces and nations. In 1986, when the first crisis of the global atmosphere emerged with the discovery of the ozone hole above Antarctica, one year later the nations of the world passed the Montreal Protocol. It was bitterly criticized by environmentalists as being too weak and insufficient. But then it was toughened and toughened, and it is working quite well, and we are on our way to solving that crisis. I am expecting a similar process for Copenhagen. We will produce a treaty that launches the beginning of a huge transformation process.
The U.S. is expecting more commitment from China. Should Obama use his upcoming Asia trip to increase pressure on Beijing?
They have to accept binding provisions. Many developing nations are still thinking that the wealthier countries will take binding obligations, and the developing countries will have non-binding provisions. That is not a formula for success. In an I.T.-empowered outsourcing world it is very easy to replicate the technological basis for production in low-wage countries. Workers in Germany and the United States and other wealthy nations fear for their jobs. We can't tell them: "We are going to have these binding obligations, but the places that have already gotten some of your jobs are going to have no obligations at all." That wouldn't work.
Isn't that even more of an incentive for developing nations not to accept any binding emission caps?
They are starting to feel the consequences of such a policy. India now faces the prospect of black carbon emissions greatly accelerating the melting of ice that forms the source of the majority of the water in the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers. They must cut back on black carbon for their own survival.
Do you see indications of a shift in awareness in China, which is the second greatest polluter in the world after the U.S.?
China has been changing fairly dramatically on this issue. While they are still opening a new coal-fired generating plant every eight or nine days, they will soon be the No. 1 power in wind and the No. 1 power in solar. In each of the last several years, they have planted two and a half times as many trees as the rest of the world put together. They are building an 800-kilovolt supergrid that, by 2020, will be the most advanced in the world. They have revised their new five-year plan, beginning a little over a year from now, to adapt the formula by which all bureaucrats and officials are evaluated for advancement or not. They have placed their success in reducing CO2 as one of the principal factors by which they pursue their career successfully or not. These are significant changes.
Will Obama travel to Copenhagen ?
He hasn't told me that he will, and no one representing him has told me that he will. But I see the calendar, I see unfolding of events and I feel certain he will go.
The White House is currently dampening expectations, because if the American president travels to Copenhagen for the summit, the rest of the world will expect a binding agreement from the United States on emissions caps.
Yes, of course. President Obama has already enacted a binding set of regulations that require a cut in emissions. But the big difference will be whether or not the Senate legislation on climate change passes or not. I believe that the draft bill introduced by Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer really does open up very new prospects. They are likely to add a title to the draft that expands support for nuclear energy. I also think they will add some provisions accelerating the substitution of gas for coal. Gas has only half the CO2 emissions of coal and two-thirds of that from oil. I think that will also generate more support and split the energy lobbies somehow. Therefore, I think there is a very real prospect that the legislation will pass, and that as a result, Obama will have the ability to go to Copenhagen with a more substantive position.
How do you see your own role in this process?
Sometimes the language of Yiddish is the most expressive. I want to be a "nudge" in Copenhagen. Someone who is pushing for action.
The most effective way to "nudge" people into action is to be president of the United States of America. Will you ever run for this office again?
Well, I am trying to recover from politics. But of course there is always a danger of a relapse when you are in recovery.
Mr. Vice President, we thank you for this interview.
The best-kept secret in Washington has nothing to do with nuclear codes or Dick Cheney's undisclosed location. It's this: Al Gore is actually pretty funny. Funny enough, in fact, that he managed to raise a daughter who wrote for "Futurama." (Also "Saturday Night Live," but let's just forgive her for that.)
Gore does pop up now and then doing cameos in various comedies -- like Thursday night's episode of "30 Rock." He's always at his best when he's making fun of himself, as he's done a couple times in "Futurama," and this was no different. Watch it below.
Jay Leno's new show has been pretty universally panned, and is generally considered unfunny. So what better opportunity to up the humor quotient than by bringing on Rush Limbaugh and giving him the opportunity to hit a cardboard cutout of former Vice President Al Gore with an electric car?
No, seriously.
Limbaugh participated in a time trial Leno's doing with the Ford Focus, an electric car; along the course, there are certain obstacles -- like a Gore dummy. The driver is, of course, supposed to avoid hitting the obstacles, but Limbaugh went out of his way to hit the Gore obstacle. He then backed up and ran over it again. (Video below.) It's just a variation of his usual schtick, of course, but it actually is pretty funny.
The more important thing about the segment, though, which will unfortunately probably get lost behind the Gore episode, is what Limbaugh says at the end of the race: "Nobody would believe this car is electric! What a blast!" At thsi point in his career, he has to stay in character, so it's unlikely you'll hear him say anything like that on his show, but it was an interesting moment -- Rush Limbaugh admitting that doing something for the environment didn't have to be a sacrifice made by tofu-eating Birkenstock wearers.
Given Taylor Branch's credentials as a historian, and the extraordinary level of access his friend Bill Clinton offered him, it's fair to expect quite a bit from Branch's forthcoming book, "The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President." Insight, certainly, as well as a closer look at then-President Clinton's private thoughts than we've ever been given before.
For the moment, though, until the book is officially released next week, we've just got snippets, the little newsy bits. And, naturally, everyone's looking for sex, gossip and conflict -- or, preferably, all three combined.
That's not to say that what's come out so far isn't interesting in its own way, though. Really, who could pass up the tale of a drunken Boris Yeltsin, at the time the president of Russia, standing out on Pennsylvania Avenue in his underwear trying to hail a cab so that he could get a pizza? It may not be the most substantive thing ever, but it does provide an interesting glimpse into U.S.-Russian relations not long after the end of the Cold War -- just the fact that the story had been kept quiet until now speaks volumes.
And in Mother Jones, David Corn has details from a copy of the book he obtained about an argument between Clinton and his vice president, Al Gore, after the latter lost the presidential election in 2000. Corn writes:
During the discussion, Clinton told his vice president that he was disappointed that Gore had not used him in the last ten days of the 2000 campaign in strategically significant states--Arkansas, Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Missouri. But Clinton said he could understand that. What was more upsetting for him, Clinton remarked to Gore, was that Gore had not crafted a more winning message during the campaign, that he had not campaigned on any grand themes. Clinton insisted to Gore that he hadn't cared about how Gore had referred to Clinton—and his personal scandal—during the campaign ....
At one point in the conversation, Gore told Clinton that he was still traumatized by having been caught up in the fundraising scandals of the 1996 Clinton reelection campaign, and he indicated that he blamed Clinton. Clinton could hardly believe this, and he told Branch that Gore was probably in shock from the election or unhinged, remarking, "I thought he was in Neverland."
Corn also has details on Clinton's thoughts about some of his fellow politicians. Commenting on Republican Jim Bunning's election to one of Kentucky's Senate seats, for instance, Clinton said to Branch, "I tried to work with him a couple times, and he just sent shivers up my spine .... I know you're a baseball fan and everything, and you don't like to hear it, but this guy is beyond the pale."
From a political standpoint, the worst thing about blaming President Obama's perceived difficulties on racism is that there's not a damn thing anybody can do about it. Determined bigots can't be shamed, while many see invoking race as more an excuse than an explanation.
Democrats who cry racism risk looking like whiners fearful they're losing the argument. Not to mention illogical. If Obama's approval rating among white voters has dropped from 63 to 43 percent, as the Los Angeles Times recently documented, it's not because they suddenly heard about his African father.
Nor should there be any reason to panic. As Joan Walsh has pointed out, 43 is the exact percentage of whites that supported Obama in 2008. Rep. Joe Wilson's, R-S.C., rude outburst during the president's speech to Congress spoke for itself, along with his longtime support for flying the Rebel flag over South Carolina's capitol.
No, Democrats won't win South Carolina's electoral votes in 2012. Nor Alabama's or Mississippi's. This should not come as a shock.
Besides, there's absolutely nothing new about the abuse directed at Obama. Pundits like the Washington Post's Colbert I. King, as my friend Bob Somerby never tires of pointing out, have arrived rather late at the party.
"There's something loose in the land," King opines, "an ugliness and hatred directed toward Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American president, that takes the breath away. The thread of resentment is woven through conservative commentary, right-wing radio and cable TV shows, all the way to Capitol Hill."
So where was King when Bill and Hillary Clinton were accused of murder by Rush Limbaugh and in videotapes peddled by the Rev. Jerry Falwell? The latter's sanctimonious mug nevertheless continued to appear constantly on network TV talk shows as an honored representative of America's devout Christians.
(I once got to ask Falwell, on camera, if the Ninth Commandment against bearing false witness was more or less important than the Sixth, forbidding adultery. He had little choice but to affirm that Scripture accorded them equal gravity. He alibied that he didn't know if the grotesque charges in "The Clinton Chronicles" were true or not.)
How about when Democratic nominee Al Gore was depicted as a fraud and serial liar through the use of phony allegations ("invented the Internet") and manufactured quotes on the front page of, yes, the Washington Post? Where was King then? Studiously polishing his fingernails, evidently.
The same is true of establishment pundits such as the New York Times' Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, who participated gleefully in sliming the previous several Democratic candidates. (Dowd and Rich invented the myth that Gore falsely claimed to be the inspiration for the novel and movie "Love Story.") So now they don the shining armor of multiculti liberalism? Please.
"King and the rest of his cohorts drank the Kool-Aid during (the 90s)," writes Somerby. "Now, they pretend that the era never occurred -- and they express their vast surprise when the same lunacy is aimed at Obama. They are amazed to see what's being said about this new Democratic president. And they diddle their cowardly brains: It must be his race, they proclaim."
Actually, I'd bet a lot that Rep. Joe Wilson's a big Condoleezza Rice fan -- or would claim to be. And sure, we left-leaning intellectuals know how to deconstruct that pose; I sometimes think detecting covert racism must be all they teach in American universities anymore. In my day, we searched for hidden phallic symbols in Emily Dickinson poems.
But I digress. It's important to remember that the same hysteria attended FDR's creation of the New Deal. America was going communist! Abandoning the Constitution! Casting aside our sacred freedoms! That's how the GOP's Henny Penny faction reacted to Social Security.
Panic may abate after Congress passes healthcare reform -- although if Obama signs a law requiring mandatory health insurance without a public option to restrain industry price gouging, there could be hell to pay.
But unease runs deeper. In my hometown paper today, there's word of a factory manufacturing stainless-steel sinks shutting down, a sawmill cutting production to one day a week and Eli Lilly & Co. announcing the elimination of 5,500 jobs.
Meanwhile, Obama's on Wall Street, talking about financial reforms, which mainly reminds people that these jokers damn near gambled the economy away, took billions in taxpayer bailouts, then kept awarding each other obscene bonuses as if nothing had happened. Fear and anger won't diminish until sawmills and factories start hiring again.
Alas, it appears to be considered bad form in the Obama White House to keep reminding voters that it was President George W. Bush's economic and tax policies -- the very miracle cures now championed by Fox News celebrities, politicians like Rep. Joe Wilson and "Teabaggers" alike -- that caused this economic Katrina to happen.
It's the economy, stupid.
© 2009 Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association
Really, President Obama has just three little things on his plate for the first year of his presidency: Fix the economy, heal the sick, save the world.
For a long time, Obama indicated that, what with soaring gas prices last summer and that pesky global warming thing on the horizon, a new energy plan would be his administration's highest priority. Recession, however, has a funny way of changing presidencies. After being inaugurated and passing the stimulus, Obama seemed to realize that his cap-and-trade proposal for managing emissions was facing a tougher fight, and shifted his emphasis, focusing more on additional plans for economic recovery, and on healthcare reform.
But just as the healthcare fight is starting to heat up, the House is getting ready to vote on its version of cap-and-trade, the Waxman-Markey Clean Energy and Security Act. House Democrats have shown some concern about reaching a majority, and if Waxman-Markey can’t pass the House, it’s definitely stillborn in the Senate. But on Thursday, Nancy Pelosi called off a plan to appear with Al Gore in a press conference, suggesting that the majority has become more confident about passing the proposal since a compromise between Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Agricultural Committee Chairman Collin Peterson. (Gore will remain in Tennessee, and call members to urge their support from there.)
Obama himself did his best to push for passage on Thursday, taking to the White House Rose Garden in order to urge Congress to back the bill.
In his speech, the president made no bones about the danger of climate change, saying flatly, "It's happening." Still, his remarks were political, targeted at those worried about the economy, not at environmentalists. He seemed especially concerned with batting down the idea that cap-and-trade will deepen the recession. "And most importantly, it will make possible the creation of millions of new jobs," said Obama. "And make no mistake: This is a jobs bill." Seeking to minimize the economic drawbacks further, he waved away eventual costs. "In a decade, the price to the average American will be about the same as a postage stamp per day."
If Obama can point to major legislation on both healthcare and energy and climate in time for the 2010 and 2012 elections, he’ll be able to say that he has, in large part, achieved his domestic mandate. Then he'll just need an economic recovery to go along with it.
You may remember Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, from a recent congressional hearing where he showed off his uncanny scientific knowledge and incredible ability to swiftly and conclusively debunk the theory of global warming. That's the hearing in which -- because he doesn't understand fairly basic concepts regarding plate tectonics -- Barton believed he'd stumped Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who only won the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics and is as such no intellectual match for a member of Congress.
On Friday, Barton was back at it, challenging former Vice President Al Gore, who appeared at a House subcommittee hearing to discuss legislation intended to help slow the progress of warming. And in the process, he showed that he's not exactly a whiz when it comes to understanding metaphors either.
Responding to comments and a question from the congressman, Gore said, "I believe that it's important to look at the sources of the science that we rely on. With all due respect, I believe that you have relied on people you have trusted, who have given you bad information. I don't blame the investors who trusted Bernie Madoff. But he gave them bad information and..."
It was at this point that Barton cut Gore off to interject, "I've never talked to Bernie Madoff."
And to think people wonder why this job has made me lose faith in Congress.
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