Reckonings: a journal of justice, hope and history

Dawn: The Prodigal Son Revisited

There are stories, told, retold, that become part of one's personal narrative, adding a richness of dimension that narrative would otherwise lack. Jesus's parable of the prodigal son is such a story for me. I've retold it and reflected upon it earlier in Reckonings, here. 

With such stories that have grown within, there comes alertness to their appearance, glancing or direct, in other lives, particularly in the consciousness of others reflected and refined in their art. I love to imagine the prodigal son returned, awakening the morning after, lying in that numinous time of transition, knowing yet wondering whether he had really come home, imagining what awaits him. 

Today I came upon Rita Dove's poem, "Dawn Revisited":

Imagine you wake up

with a second chance. The blue jay

hawks his pretty wares

and the oak still stands, spreading

glorious shade. If you don't look back,

the future never happens.

How good to rise in sunlight,

in the prodigal smell of biscuits-

eggs and sausage on the grill.

The whole sky is yours

To write on, blown open

to a blank page. Come on,

shake a leg! You'll never know

who's down there, frying those eggs,

if you don't get up and see.

George Packer on Obama's appointments

I'm inclined to agree with George Packer of The New Yorker, who writes the following in his blog about Obama's appointments. The likelihood of Obama 1 looking like a Clinton 3 is negligible. Packer finds, I think rightly, a closer kinship to FDR's choices in 1933.

NOTHING TO FEAR

Mary Anne Berkery, a fellow Brooklynite, has a letter in the Times today expressing outrage at Obama’s Cabinet choices. “The reason most Americans supported an unknown, untested, thinly experienced Barack Obama as president was that they were desperate for real change,” Ms. Berkery writes.

His unequivocal mandate was to bring change. Instead, we watch as he appoints person after person from the Clinton political machine, creating a virtual third Clinton presidency—the very re-creation many of us had worked hard to prevent. Instead of taking the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he has taken the mantle of Bill Clinton. It is more than disappointing; it is dishonest.

Taking this interpretation even further, the Times’ David Sanger wrote on Saturday that the selections prove that “Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party.”

I know other people who share this idea and aren’t happy about it. But I think they, along with Mary Anne Berkery and David Sanger, are wrong. Start with the mantle of F.D.R. Who did Roosevelt place around him in his first Administration? The average age of his top eight Cabinet picks was sixty. They included two sitting senators, a governor, two Republicans, and the chairman of Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 reëlection campaign. The only Cabinet appointees who fit the description of “change agents” were Henry Wallace, age forty-four, a farm expert and newspaper publisher, at Agriculture, and Frances Perkins, age fifty, the New York State industrial commissioner and first-ever woman Cabinet member, at Labor. The others were chosen for reasons of political payback, regional and ideological balance, and experience. Even among his White House advisers, Roosevelt made sure that the Party’s various economic ideas were represented. And then he proceeded to change the country with the New Deal.

Obama’s picks should reassure Mary Anne Berkery. They don’t mean that he’s going to govern from the center-right of the Party, pace David Sanger. I think they mean he’s going to govern seriously, without the parochialism of Jimmy Carter or the chaos of Bill Clinton or the self-delusion of George W. Bush. An “unknown, untested, thinly experienced” President who has as ambitious a domestic program as Barack Obama needs advisers who know how to get things done in Washington. That he is not afraid to recognize this shows his tremendous self-confidence. Obama’s advisers won’t be setting his policies, they will be executing his policies. And since 2009 will be a lot more like 1933 than like 1993, Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers and Rahm Emmanuel and the rest (some known for their lack of personal délicatesse but not for their ideological rigidity) will not be reliving their Clinton years. They will not be pursuing deregulation and deficit reduction. They are smart enough to know that history will judge how they do during the Obama years, which will call for thinking and acting anew.

As for Hillary Clinton at State, I imagine she will be as hardworking, disciplined, and in command of her subject as she was in the Senate and during the campaign. My fear is not that she’ll be a bad team player for Obama, but that she will manage the department as badly as she managed her campaign. That’s a fear I can live with.

Hope on a Tightrope: a prophetic voice of the blues

Cornel West, Princeton professor of religion and Afro American studies, talked with Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now" about Barack Obama's election and prospects for his presidency, and memorably described his own mission informing a new book, Hope on a Tightrope.

AMY GOODMAN: We end, Professor Cornel West, with your explaining your title in this day and age, in 2008, in this day, this month of the election of Barack Obama: Hope on a Tightrope.

CORNEL WEST: Yes. America’s hanging in the balance, state of emergency, sense of urgency. I’m a blues man in the life of the mind, a jazzman in the world of ideas, and the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of a personal catastrophe, expressed lyrically and endured with grace and dignity. How do we deal with catastrophic circumstances of our children, catastrophic circumstances of our workers, catastrophic circumstances of our gay brothers and lesbian sisters? Let us not forget Proposition 8 in other states that denied the rights of our gay brothers and lesbian sisters, even as we celebrate Brother Barack Obama. The catastrophic ought to be our focus. That’s what blues people are about. For Christians, it’s the cross as a catastrophic—what kind of sensitivity do we have for people wrestling with catastrophic circumstances? And how do they resist? How do they endure? How do they persevere? How do we democratize and embrace all of humanity so that the wretched of the earth are able to live lives of decency and dignity?

Listen and watch by clicking here.

Bill Moyers Journal: Deborah Amos, Elizabeth Rubin and Fred Kaplan on Obama's foreign policy challenges

A particularly valuable discussion, focusing particularly on Afghanistan, Iraq,  abandonment of the Bush Administration's discredited and disastrous "War on Terror," a more modest and collaborative, less militarized American role in pursuing security in the Middle East and central Asia.

To watch and listen, click here.

The Obamas on "60 Minutes"

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