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Check-in On The Truce

June 26, 2008

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An interview with NPR's "Here and Now."

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Greece, Economists, And The Value Of The Euro

Is the euro bad for Greece? "I’ve never seen Europe in such dire straits," Roger Cohen writes in yesterday's Times. "Greece is full of the aganaktismenoi, or the outraged, who resent the sharp cuts and sales of state industries made necessary because there is no drachma to devalue in order to regain competitiveness. Like protesters in Spain, they feel the poor and unemployed are paying for the errors of politicians, the evasions of the rich, and the whole globalized system that rewards the tech-savvy initiated while punishing those left behind."

Hmm. You devalue, you become more competitive. The ideal of European unity cannot trump this macroeconomic axiom, one that economists as different as Paul Krugman and Martin Feldstein take for granted and increasingly resentful Greeks have a right to embrace. Once--so the argument goes--countries in Greece's position would not have been forced to deflate, radically cut budgets (hence, services) or engender widesprea…

Obama's Way: Defend 'The Conversation' Itself

Nobody's asked, but I think I know how President Obama can turn things around. In a way (I shudder to think), it mirrors how Newt Gingrich turned around his own campaign against Romney, at least for a few weeks, until his career, hypocrisy, nuttiness and hard facts caught up with him--not a risk for the president.

Remember the speech on race? Obama needs again to become the most responsible man on the stage, questioning the way political events are represented, and becoming custodian of the public conversation itself. As early as possible in the debate, Obama should say something like this:

You know, I've naturally thought a great deal about reactions to the last debate, and wondered about what more I might have said, but one common explanation for shifting opinion particularly caught my attention. Again and again, I've heard folks on news shows say that the best way to judge who won was to turn off the volume completely and just look at the faces of the debaters.

Well, rea…

September

I can't prove this, but I sense (forgive me) a paradigm shift among Israelis, a new way of talking to accommodate the anomalies emerging from the old puzzle pieces--you know, the puzzle that begins with "Zionism" and ends with "Iran." The biggest anomaly is "September."

The reference, of course, is to the impending decision of the UN General Assembly to recognize Palestine in the 1967 borders. But "September" also means puzzle pieces fitting together, at least for Israelis who constitute the "center": people who are not so deeply committed to Greater Israel that the very word diplomacy feels like a threat, or an invitation to a propaganda effort, or both; people who are not cloistered in settlements or Yeshivot or Jerusalem Gemütlichkeit; people for whom elections still feel like decision points; people who ask the questions and give the answers on Israeli radio; people who can be the difference between a 65 seat majority for the…

Flash: Olmert Supports Abbas's UN Bid

The following is reposted from Open Zion, a featured section of The Daily Beast, where I contribute a regular column.
Tomorrow, Mahmoud Abbas stands before the U.N. General Assembly and presents a resolution to upgrade Palestine’s membership to the status of an “observer-state.” The Obama administration has signaled that it will oppose this resolution, as it vetoed a Security Council condemnation of settlements last year—putatively to emphasize the need for direct negotiations between the parties. With the Iranian nuclear program still on the horizon, the administration is loathe call its “special relationship” with Israel into question, or run afoul of a hardline Israeli consensus, of which Benjamin Netanyahu is presumably custodian.

AIPAC is mobilized, warning of Abbas’s non-violent effort as, of all things, a “flanking maneuver.” We hear much about the danger of Palestinian diplomats, newly elevated to representatives of an observer-state, bringing action in the International Crimi…

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