Marbury

what just happened?

Barack Obama managed to do the impossible yesterday: delight independents, commentators and his base (and even a few Republicans).He was invited to speak to a gathering of the Republican congressional caucus, and accepted. That's not unprecedented. What is, is that after a twenty-minute speech he took questions from his audience for an hour, whilst the camera rolled. Independent observers loved the unscripted, dramatic nature of the encounter, and the extraordinary fact that for most of the time the participants were courteously discussing actual policies, like grown-ups and everything. The Dem base was delighted because Obama, whilst civil, gave some of his questioners a pretty hard time. And just about everyone agreed that this was the president at his best - fluent, commanding, persuasive, charming, and the best-informed person in the room. Comments across the blogs and newspapers have been almost universally positive, almost giddy. Is this is what politics could be like?! We'll see - perhaps this will herald a real, enduring change of tone. Or perhaps it will be remembered as like the football match between British and German troops, before each tribe returned to their trenches and the guns resumed their fire.

can murray overcome the fed?

Prospect's William Skidelsky thinks that Federer will walk it tomorrow, in "three (possibly four) sets". Here's why:

Federer made a revealing comment a couple of months ago, shortly before playing Murray (and winning) at the end of year ATP tour finals tournament in London. “It’s up to me whether I beat Murray,” he said. What he meant by this is that if his attacking game is fully functioning, Murray simply doesn’t have the weapons to cope with it—even if he is playing at his best. And I think this is true.

Skidelsky takes Federer's comment at face value. I think it was "revealing", too, but in a different way. Federer is famously polite, and elaborately humble in his public statements. He takes great care not to boast, even as he exudes a sense of utter confidence in his own greatness. The comment in question was unusual, then. It suggested to me that the champion was experiencing the unfamiliar sensation of self-doubt, and was, in effect, reassuring himself.

Having said that, I think Skidelsky is right to point to Federer's superb form in this tournament - his self-doubt seems to have been banished. So he must be favourite to win. Murray, however, is in possibly in the best form of his career, and his desire to beat Federer whilst the great man is still somewhere near his prime will be intense. This might just be a great match.

what the news is made of

blair's evidence

I don't have an awful lot to say about the substance of his evidence because, inevitably, there was very little "new news". Very broadly: I do think he took the country to war honestly and properly and with due process. I'm not sure that the war was wise, and the lack of good planning was a disgrace. But I do think it was a very close decision and those who pretend it was simple aren't thinking hard enough about it.

On the theatre of it: gosh, but the man has stamina. At the end of six hours of tough questioning he seemed as energetic, focused and lit up by his own sense of conviction as he did at the beginning. The intensity with which he devoured every question was extraordinary. There were no questions that he had real difficulty with. He was alert, passionate and eloquent throughout.

He clearly has blindspots; there did seem to be groupthink going on, and I'm not sure he worked hard enough at getting opposing points of view into the room (in the way Obama did during the recent decision-making process on Afghanistan). But I think he dealt with the main anti-war charges - that he lied, that he said one thing to Bush in private and another in public, that he was cavalier with process - very convincingly.

Now, this wasn't meant to be a political performance, but I do think he missed an opportunity to signal humility and sadness about the loss of life in his closing words. That he didn't is admirable in some ways - a total refusal to pander. He must be thinking, why I should I have to plead for my humanity to the baying wolves of the British media? But by not even making the standard expression of regret for the loss of life he opened himself to accusations of callousness, and hardened further the already deep rift between him and opinion-formers in this country. Perhaps he doesn't care about his reputation here any more, doesn't give a stuff about rehabilitating or re-branding himself as even Alastair Campbell has done fairly successfully in recent years. But I can't believe that's true. This is still his home.

the chilcot inquiry everyone wants

Robert Shrimsley sums it up:

The hearings go back and forth till suddenly, to audible gasps, Chilcot produces what is literally a smoking gun with the letters TB carved on the side, asking theatrically "Is this yours?"

A visibly shaken Blair is then shown texts he sent to George Bush, including one that runs: "Sod the UN; whatever u want George, I'll fix at this end. My three priorities are evasion, evasion and invasion."

Then follows an e-mail to Alastair Campbell asking: "Can't we make the evidence up, say he's got WMD and could bomb us in 45 mins? Get Scarlett to agree and, for God's sake, don't let Andrew Gilligan find out."

witch hunt logic

Here is a fine example of how the debate over Iraq has twisted so many great minds into knots. Anthony Seldon, historian and (fairly sympathetic) biographer of Blair, has a column in the Times today that is a classic of its genre:

The question he must answer is why exactly he was so fixated on the removal of Saddam Hussein. He should admit that the moral argument was more compelling to him personally than the issue of weapons of mass destruction.

So, Seldon - who can, apparently, read minds - has already decided to what Blair "should admit". If he doesn't admit it, he's lying. If he does admit it, he lied. Either way, drown or float, he's a liar.

Bizarrely, Seldon tries to have it both ways. He describes Blair as  "deep and principled man" and also accuses him of "dissembling", for years, over Iraq. Difficult to reconcile these two judgements, you might have thought.

But here's the classic:

His guiding light today must not be to explain or defend himself, but to be totally honest.

Er, right.

Why don't we just have it over with and burn him at the stake?

first ad for the iPad

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what hackery is this?

If this is what it seems, it's a case of quite breathtaking unprofessionalism. In America, people would fired over that. British newspapers need to understand that if they're going to retain a role in a world of proliferating news sources online, they should be raising their editorial standards, not lowering them. This is particularly true of science reporting, on which, as we've been reminded this week, the press here has a woeful record.

those unanswered questions

John Rentoul sums up the spirit of the week:

They are all at it: drawing up lists of "the unanswered questions"... that Tony Blair MUST answer, even though the reason that he MUST answer is because "everyone knows" that he is guilty of terrible, terrible things. In which case, what's the point of even asking?

We may as well throw him in a pool and see if he floats.

living with one's mistakes

From a series of misspelled tattoos, at HuffPo.

what does it matter what causes anything?

I am tired of commentators, usually on the right, complaining that Obama shouldn't be blaming any of the nation's problems on Bush or the Republicans or even mentioning the fact that he inherited the worst legacy of any president for, well, ever: two appallingly managed wars, an imploding economy, a collapsing infrastructure, a soaring budget deficit, and more.

Obama made one or two pointed comments about this inheritance yesterday, reminding those on the right side of the aisle (as well as those Tea Party twits) that no, actually, he didn't conjure up a deficit from nothing. Bush and the GOP gave him a headstart on that one.

This seems remarkably restrained to me. If I were him I'd want to stand up there and tell them to be ashamed of themselves for such hypocrisy and that, as Clement Attlee said to Harold Laski, a period of silence on their part would be most welcome. But even Obama's polite version meets with disapproval in certain quarters. Clive Crook writes this:

What does it matter who caused the problem? Obama's job is to solve it.

Andrew Sullivan, quite rightly, dumps on his fellow Atlantic blogger from a great height for this piece of near-sublime idiocy.

Actually, it reminds me of a comment somebody made about global warming during the 2008 campaign:

"But it kinda doesn't matter at this point in the debate what caused it. The point is it's real; we need to do something about it."

iPadness

Even though I can't quite get over the sanitary-sounding name (there's even a MaxiPad; does it have a dry-weave surface?) and am concerned that after creating a bigger iPhone Apple is now moving backwards in time and that next year Steve Jobs will lug a giant fax machine on to the stage, I am still willing to believe Stephen Fry when he says don't believe the lack of hype:

Like the first iPhone, iPad 1.0 is a John the Baptist preparing the way of what is to come, but also like iPhone 1.0 (and Jokanaan himself too come to that) iPad 1.0 is still fantastic enough in its own right to be classed as a stunningly exciting object, one that you will want NOW and one that will not be matched this year by any company. In the future, when it has two cameras for fully featured video conferencing, GPS and who knows what else built in (1080 HD TV reception and recording and nano projection, for example) and when the iBook store has recorded its 100 millionth download and the thousands of accessories and peripherals that have invented uses for iPad that we simply can’t now imagine – when that has happened it will all have seemed so natural and inevitable that today’s nay-sayers and sceptics will have forgotten that they ever doubted its potential.

SOTU review

A solid 7 or maybe 8 out of ten. The speech of a president who, though he is embattled, is still confident.

Some basic points: he got in the bank-bashing stuff early before people tuned out. He reminded everyone that his administration is tax-cutting not tax-raising. He sent a lot of the kind of small, targeted message-sending that isn't terribly exciting but, as Bill Clinton will tell you, can work very well politically. The passage on heath-care - admitting mistakes but challenging the GOP to be constructive - was fairly strong (although perhaps he lacks a little conviction that he'll be able to get anything done).

He lapsed into professorial mode a few times - for example when explaining the need for green energy investment. I didn't think his snigger at the expense of climate-change sceptics was that smart. And the whole thing - like Avatar - was way too long. The peroration was moving but I assume most people had tuned out by then.

The delivery wasn't flawless but - and this is the most important point - it had energy. The president seemed upbeat, relaxed and spirited, rather than bitter, defensive or depressed. He even cracked a few jokes (including one at his own expense on the politics of healthcare) and flashed that ensorcelling* smile. Even if viewers didn't absorb the substance of the speech, they will have noticed his demeanour.

So it should provide him with a boost, at least in the short term. But in itself, this speech wasn't terribly important. What matters is what happens to the economy, and to Obama's legislative priorities over the next few months.

Other notes:

Joe Biden is very proud of his shiny teeth.

Biden and Pelosi clearly co-ordinated.

Tim Geithner dresses like an 83-year-old professor.

Finally: this year's Joe Wilson: Supreme Court Justice Joseph Alito!

* Copyright Maureen Dowd.

SOTU preview

Well, that's an exaggeration. I have no idea what the substance of Obama's first State of the Union will be. Nobody does. That's quite unusual, but there's been very little leakage. This may be because Obama wants to spring a surprise - or because there's nothing to tell.

Since Massachusetts, there's been a sense that the White House is in shock, and that, on the key issue of the day - healthcare - it just hasn't figured out what to do.

Perhaps all will become clear tonight.

john cleese explains the brain

A two-minute tour de force of exposition:

(h/t: Mind Hacks)