"All the President's Men" and "Citizenfour"

[selenak]

Not so coincidentally, I just finished reading, for the first time though of course I'd watched the movie by Alan Pakula a dozen times, All the President's Men, the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate case and their reporting of it. It still holds up incredibly well. Despite knowing a lot about the Watergate affair in

Comments

[amenirdis]

*thinks carefully* I think Obama gets more of a pass than another Democratic president would, yes. And I think the reason is obvious -- the Left is afraid of any criticism that would appear racist. That was something that came up in the primary in 2008 -- any attack on Obama had to be very carefully constructed because it would be perceived as racist. While not a bad primary candidate in 2008, if he had been white he would not have been the nominee. A senator in his first term, with no experience beyond the Illinois legislature? He would have made a good impression, made some friends, and been a viable candidate in the future. But symbolically he was so strong, and it was so hard for any other candidate to say, "This guy is good, but he's too young and inexperienced," that he became the nominee. And while I think he's a good man and would have been a good president down the line, he was not ready for the job and has not done well. So yes, I do think he's getting more of a pass. Obama is extremely difficult to criticize from

[selenak]

Someone in recent weeks - may have been Frank Bruni - pointed out that neither Bush the Younger nor Obama ever experienced losing a campaign before becoming President, and that it showed with both, because going through the experience of losing and having to try again is a good way to find out whether you actually like the political process and working within it enough to go through such a humiliating experience, possibly repeatedly. And that both Bush and Obama gave/give the impression of finding out they don't like Washington politics and politicians while in the highest political office in the country, which is fatal

[amenirdis]

The Kennedy comparison is very apt, I think. One of Kennedy's biggest problems, the one that led to less than stellar decisions like the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam, was his reliance on his "whiz kids" like Robert McNamara. (You may already know all this, and if so please pardon me.) He wanted to get rid of old school voices like George Marshall and replace them with young, energetic new thinkers who had brand new ideas. Like the idea that wars could be won with strategic bombing, which Marshall's generation had concluded was impossible. Bombing civilians only caused tremendous loss of life, and did not actually succeed in bringing anyone on either side to the table. Unless one was willing to use nuclear weapons, which we weren't, strategic bombing had already been proven worthless to "break the enemy's will" unless accompanied by a forceful ground invasion. And so we got into a situation based on a premise that old professionals already knew was flawed, but that was a new idea from bright young men. (Excellent book on the subject

[melusinehr]

I should note that I am a super left-wing Democrat who voted for Obama twice (actually three times; I voted for him in the primary against Hillary), and I really don't understand why we liberals haven't been more outraged about the way he's handled the Snowden issue. Personally, I'm deeply and thoroughly disappointed in Obama - not, I should note, for his inability to work with a Congress which was completely opposed to working with him, but for his persecution of whistleblowers (like Snowden and Manning), his continuation of the war machine, his failure to rein in the NSA and FBI and so on, and other thoughtless executive branch decisions. The thing is, I don't think Hillary would make a bad president per se, but I also don't believe she would have made different choices in office; it just would have been a lot less hypocritical coming from her

[mamculuna]

With you on Obama. He's done very little that he promised, and the war is the big thing he promised NOT to do.

[selenak]

re: Hillary, agreed on both counts - she wouldn't have handled the NSA issue any differently, but she's always been (and presented herself) as more of a hawk.

I really don't understand why we liberals haven't been more outraged about the way he's handled the Snowden issue.

That's why I can't help but speculate if there would have been more outrage for any other President but Obama (and most definitely for any Republican President). I remember how deeply shocked I was when for the first time reading the statistics on how the Bush and the Obama governments respectively handled whistleblowers, with Bush actually coming out better.

It still hasn't quite hit home yet that this kind of constant surveillance isn't limited to "the bad guys." What also doesn't seem to have hit home is that even if you somehow believe the current government would not abuse all this knowledge it now has about you, what about the next one? Which would have this well oiled machinery and collected data at its disposal? Say a Tea Party candidate actually

[melusinehr]

From what I understand, a number of Tea Partiers think abortion should be illegal even when there is a rape, so you're not being paranoid enough. But otherwise, yep, there seems to be a fundamental inability to think about what pushing a particular agenda will mean once the other side is in power, because no one is able to imagine the other side being in power.

[mamculuna]

Do want to say that some of us see Snowden as Ellsberg, but then only some of us vote Green over here. The real question is why is that group grown so small now, when we used to be so big in the US? Why has the US gone down the drain...

I really want to see that movie, if I'm ever in a place where it's running. Or when it's available online, I suppose.

[selenak]

Why third parties never seem to develop into a size that allows them to co-govern in the US and influence its policies is a bit mystifying to me anyway (and was long before the current situation). Yes, I know two parties are traditional in the US, but "because it's always been this way" can't be all the explanation? Of course maybe I'm imprinted too deeply by growing up in a country which post WWII has always been governed by coalition governments of various stripes, and where the Greens developed into the third largest party and by the 1990s had overtaken the FDP as the party who gets to play majority deciding coalition partner.

[amenirdis]

I think the reason in recent years is that it's not possible for a third start up party to compete financially. It takes tens of millions to run a party, and even the most enthusiastically supported grassroots movements (see the Tea Party) can't get the money, and so have to be absorbed by one of the two major parties.

[mamculuna]

Why they didn't develop in the past is a mystery, but at present the two major parties work very hard to prevent others from developing (maintaining onerous ballot access laws, preventing them from participating in debates, etc.) It makes for strange bedfellows as the Greens and Libertarians are joining in a suit to enter 2016 debates.