Obama rides the razor's edge. His campaign was a valiant effort to "end politics as usual" and the "failed policies of the past." These seemed more than platitudes under the careful rhetorical style and formulation Obama crafted. But the stimulus package-politics is very much more of the same, now with gutting of investments in education and related infrastructure for future generations. Peter Defazio (House D-, OR) has voted against the bill because of the concessions made to Republicans for more tax cuts. Folks can find his comments to the House of Reps online.
Public administrators, like Obama himself, have little to embrace among the signals being sent now from DC. (Obama signs the stimulus bill package today in Colorado.) PA writers should begin paying close attention to the substantive distinctions between Obama and the failed policies he has disparaged. Tax cutting means more neo-liberal divestment in the civic sphere. Extreme rendition, on any timeline (Obama makes clear he intends retaining the program but with restorations of habeas) enjoins public administrators to a gauntlet for world policing that will bind policy discourse everywhere to the failed policies of the past and brutal fictions into the future. Obama's black-ness will be used as symbolic indication of the "end of race" mantra that seeps through every civic channel in the US.
I would very much like hearing from among peers/colleagues their thoughts about what rhetorical signals from Obama that PA theorists should now focus upon; what sub-surface structures--semiotic and otherwise--are likely to gain "traction" as Obama wends further into these 100 days.
Matthew Witt is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration in the College of Business and Public Management, University of LaVerne.
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Perhaps beyond Presidents and legislation from a broken system, we need to look at a bigger picture...
Do we need a Referendum For A New Democracy?
Are you concerned about the future of democracy? Do you feel democracy is under attack by extreme greed in countries around the world? Are you sick and tired of: living in fear, corporate greed, growing police state, government for the rich, working more but having less?
Can we use both elections and random selection (in the way we select government officials) to rid democracy of undue influence by extreme wealth and wealth-dominated mass media campaigns?
The world's first democracy (Athenian democracy, 600 B.C.) used both elections and random selection. Even Aristotle (the cofounder of Western thought) promoted the use random selection as the best way to protect democracy. The idea of randomly selecting (after screening) juries remains from Athenian democracy, but not randomly selecting (after screening) government officials. Why is it used only for individual justice and not also for social justice? Who wins from that? ...the extremely wealthy?
What is the best way to combine elections and random selection to protect democracy in today's world? Can we use elections as the way to screen candidates, and random selection as the way to do the final selection? Who wins from that? ...the people?
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