He Got Game: Obama off the bench

Suddenly, this week, the president we voted for six years ago took the court.

Perhaps sensing a precious moment of opportunity before Republicans seize control of both houses of Congress, Obama issued two definitive statements this week - one on climate change, the other on net neutrality. When the president was elected, many of us expected a presidency that would be something of an extension of his campaign artistry, an implementation of his oratorical dazzle. We didn't get it. Rather, Obama has fallen short on all sorts of fronts, from immigration to the environment to racial justice issues, toeing a moderate line and selecting questionable advisors, leaving us to wonder whether he was perhaps patholigically committed to the dream of bipartisanship, or secretly in the pocket of corporate interests. 

The answer seems to be emerging this week. Tellingly timed in the wake of sweeping congressional and gubernatorial losses by democrats, the president came out swinging. First, Obama issued one of his most unambiguous policy statements while in office, taking a stand on a free and open internet, in opposition to the industry-tool FCC chairman he appointed. As reported in Democracy Now!,  Obama's statement so directly paralleled the talking points of protesters and the 4 million public commentors to the FCC (99% of whom favored net neutrality), that it signals a departure from Obama's hand-holding of corporate partners and his forced congeniality toward Republicans, and a step back into the crowds who helped elect him. With Obama's boldness in arguing that the internet belongs within Title II of the Telecommunications Act - moving it from a special classification (section 706) to on-par with public utilities (as was done with the telephone to oppose the Bell monopoly) - he summoned his talent for a visionary channeling of the founding fathers into modern context, which gave so many of us hope when electing him. (If the FCC breaks with Obama on this, one imagines a stronger, First-Amendment challenge to internet regulation on the basis that cyberspace forms a modern-day public square for the gathering of people for protest).

A deft political move to be sure, but this was only a warm-up. However much we may have fantasized about what Obama's basketball moves might look like played out in the political arena, the truth has been he's spent most of his presidency effectively on the bench. That changed this week, when he revealed he's been developing a trick play away from cameras with the Chinese, which they dunked on the Republicans by unveiling mutually binding climate targets contextualized into each country's reality, which require zero congressional approval as they draw entirely on existing law. With action steps focused on accelerating positive innovation, rather than enforcing punitive restrictions on American consumption habits, Obama simultaneously took the visionary reins back from environmental leaders, and preemptively siphoned the gas out of Republicans' messaging SUV. Whereas the clarion call of environmentalists has been that climate change is the consequence of America's irresponsible lifestyle choices - feeding into Republicans' defense of the American way of life - Obama reversed this polarity by linking responsible climate change action with American innovation and economic prosperity, as first sketched during his campaign with the green jobs playbook Van Jones had run.

Let’s hope the president's moves this week were just the beginning, and that he continues to drive the hoop with the same strategic timing and misdirection now that he's 1-on-1 with a Republican congress -- and leaves us scratching our heads wondering, ‘Who was that masked man?'