James Goodale. (Photo By Don MacLeod)

James C. Goodale, the so-called “father of reporters' privilege” and the author of a new book called Fighting for the Press (CUNY Journalism Press, 255 pp., $20), was in his office at the Debevoise & Plimpton law firm, where he’s a partner, comparing Barack Obama to Richard M. Nixon.

“Nixon and Agnew were like listening to a Fox News program all day long, every day,” he said. “In their eyes, the Eastern establishment press were against them and they were against it and they were going to destroy it as best they can.” But, he said, “Obama has all these things that he’s done to the press on national security matters that Nixon never did.”

Mr. Goodale, 79, was the general counsel of The New York Times during the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, when President Nixon ordered the old grey lady to cease publication of excerpts from a 7,000-page document, which detailed America's involvement in Vietnam over the course of three decades. The Times published the first excerpt on June 13, 1971. By June 26, the case had reached the Supreme Court. Over the course of a few days, the justices ruled in a 6-3 decision that the U.S. government could not censor the Times. Nixon then convened a grand jury to indict the Times for conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act—"which really doesn't mean anything," Mr. Goodale said, rubbing his forehead in distress—but the case quickly fell apart. Fighting for the Press reads like a political thriller, with Nixon providing some dark comic relief. The guy was not exactly subtle: "As far as the Times is concerned," he said to John Mitchell, the U.S. Attorney General, "hell they're our enemies."

Now, the man who successfully fought Nixon says President Obama has an even more troubling record. He has indicted six leakers to Nixon's one, and just this week came word that federal investigators had seized two months of AP phone records without notice. Mr. Goodale believes that a grand jury has secretly indicted Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and the publisher of the Afghan War Logs, one of the more substantial leaks since the Pentagon Papers. The father of reporter's privilege is doing everything in his power to make sure the case does not go forward.

“We’re going in a circle,” Mr. Goodale said. “When I talk to journalists about Assange—Jesus. They really don’t like him. They say, ‘He’s not one of us. We don’t care what happens to him.’ So I’m saying, ‘Wake up!’ If the government goes after him and gets him, that’s bad for everybody down the line. I'm way out on a limb in this book because it's three years after the grand jury was convened and it hasn't done anything. But I am quite confident the grand jury is alive. And I am confident that it has indicted Assange in secret. In any event, until the government tells us it's gone away, I feel like we have to speak out against it. This will set a standard. And I can’t seem to get through.”

The life of a First Amendment lawyer, and a general ally to journalists, is far different now than it was in 1971, when Mr. Goodale was still a young man. He's very much a holdover from a different era. For one thing, the days are long gone when a person simply read one reputable morning newspaper and then went on with the rest of their day. The proliferation of writing on the Internet has both increased the amount of libel that is published and desensitized the public to it, Mr. Goodale says.

“Privacy was something that everyone worried about, that they thought would blow up in their face,” he said. “We have a generational change with respect to privacy. The new generation really doesn't value privacy in the same way as the preceding generation. There was no Paris Hilton in the print days. Can you imagine The Observer printing a picture of Paris Hilton fornicating?”

(No comment here from the Transom, other than to say that Mr. Goodale raised his eyebrows in utter disbelief.)

When he represented the Times, the paper of record was in danger of going bankrupt. He helped found The New York Observer, offering a cautionary voice about its economic viability. He was George Plimpton's personal attorney when The Paris Review, by his account, "was four people around a desk in a basement that was dank and mushrooms were growing in it."

It was a decidedly fancier scene when the Review threw Mr. Goodale a party at their new offices in Chelsea last Wednesday. Lorin Stein, the Review's editor, praised Mr. Goodale's "irascible eye." Mr. Goodale offered a firsthand glimpse at it

"I wanted to reach a conclusion that would inform President Obama with respect to his actions on the relationship of national security to the press," he told the room, a mix of old lawyers and young writers. "He’s not been very good on it. But the idea was the national security claims do not hold up in the long run and the First Amendment protects journalists." He paused. "So don’t get involved in that mess!"

mmiller@observer.com

President Obama talks on the phone with FBI Director Mueller about the bombings. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Earlier this evening, President Barack Obama addressed the nation about the deadly bombing of the Boston Marathon. And, while extending his condolences, the president urged the American public to avoid jumping to conclusions—terrorism, unmentioned by Mr. Obama, seemingly being the most obvious—as the devastation is investigated.

"We still do not know who did this or why and people shouldn't jump to conclusions before we have all of the facts," Mr. Obama explained. "But, make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of this. And we will find out who did this. We'll find out why they did this. Any responsible individuals—any responsible groups—will feel the full weight of justice."

Mr. Obama also said that he's mobilizing the federal government to assist local governments respond and investigate the apparent attack, as well as increasing "security around the United States as necessary."

A man is loaded into an ambulance after the explosions. (Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images)

"I've directed the full resources of the federal government to help state and local authorities protect our people, increase security around the United States as necessary and investigate what happened," he said.  "I've also spoken with Governor Patrick and Mayor Menino and maid it clear that they will have every single federal resource necessary to care for the victims and counsel the families. And, above all, I made it clear to them that all Americans stand with the people of Boston."

Mr. Obama, sending his sympathies to the victims, further provided a post-partisan message of unity as Boston recovers.

"I've updated leaders of Congress in both parties and we reaffirmed that on days like this, there are no Republicans or Democrats; we are Americans united in concern for our fellow citizens," he said. "Boston is a tough and resilient town; so are its people. I'm supremely confident that Bostonians will pull together, take care of each other and move forward as one proud city. And, as they do, the American people will be with them."

Ms. Kennedy. (Getty Images)

I kinda like Caroline Kennedy. Not that she would care if I do or don’t. In any case, I haven’t seen her for a dozen years—and before that only fleetingly. We first met when she was an undergraduate at Harvard in the late ’70s. She was the belle (or maybe not ...) of my brilliant student and future colleague Eric Breindel, whose accomplished life working as Senator Moynihan’s top intellectual aide and as chief New York Post editorialist was plagued by tempests and torments that ended tragically in 1998. (He’d had other belles before and after: Benazir “Pinky” Bhutto, for one, and then a gifted writer wife and a devoted girlfriend, and finally his longtime love, Lally Weymouth.)

One fact I remember about Caroline is that, when shopping around for an area of academic concentration, she contemplated applying to the select program in social studies that I had run for years. Since she knew that Eric and I were close, however, she imagined that some favoritism might play into the process, and she went off to study in another field. She brought her mother around to my house at a graduation party. Jackie was not at all patronizing, even though by then she had been married to the most powerful man on earth and then to one of the wealthiest.

Apparently, President Obama now intends to appoint Mrs. Kennedy Schlossberg as the American emissary to Japan. John F. Kerry, the recently confirmed and appropriately grave secretary of state, might have other thoughts on the matter. But I suspect his leeway is not great—after all, most of the important ambassadorial posts have been given or are in the process of going to (mostly) men from Barack and Michelle’s political life. The Russian Federation and Brazil are exceptions; they have been sent academic or diplomatic professionals. On the other hand, hacks have been dispatched to key countries, even to China and South Africa. The editor of Vogue will not be sent to London. But whoever will be needs to have deep pockets like the one who left last week. Five previous ambassadors to the U.K. were elected president of the United States. Paris still has its American plenipotentiary, whose credentials include being the son of a former ambassador and the CEO of the company that brought the Muppets to the world. I am sure they are all fine and estimable men.

(Getty Images)

Why do many people object to Caroline’s ambitions to become our ambassador in Tokyo and take issue with Mr. Obama’s apparent determination to designate her for the posting? Well, one fact is clear: she is no Edwin O. Reischauer, who served as the U.S. emissary to Japan from 1961 to 1966. Mr. Reischauer was a great scholar of Japan and Japanese civilization, perhaps the greatest American in the field ... ever. Oh, and he was appointed by Jack Kennedy, Caroline’s dad. But let’s face it. This administration is not comfortable in the realm of the cerebral, which includes sheer factual knowledge, lots of it, and also presumes deep thought. You will not get that from Valerie Jarrett or David Plouffe. Frankly, the present White House makes me nostalgic for Jimmy Carter’s executive mansion. You had two brainy people with antagonistic views, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Cyrus Vance, arguing it all out before an intellectually picky president. The present president already knows everything he needs to know.

But back to Secretary Kerry. He’s just back from one of his many urgent Middle Eastern tours. I suggest that his North Korean agenda item is more significant than whether he can lure the Palestinians to the negotiating table. In fact, the outcome of the U.S. attempt to persuade Pyongyang to reverse its nuclear program will be seen in Israel as an index of what America’s course will be vis-à-vis Iran’s atomic aspirations. The Palestinians can’t destroy the Jewish state. The Palestinians can actually only destroy themselves, like the Syrians are and the Egyptians will soon do. But Tehran might plausibly try nukes out on Israel. So what has this to do with Caroline Kennedy? Japan will be needed in the confrontation with Kim Jung-un. Diplomacy with Asian nations is stylized theater. Will it then be Kabuki? If so, women are forbidden to play. The North Koreans are the real test of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy. If Mr. Obama doesn’t beat them down, then his threats to Iran are implausible. Downright unbelievable.

Another factor behind the Kennedy surprise is that she has tried this once before. She let it be known before agreements had been reached that she wanted to succeed Hillary Clinton as U.S. senator from New York. A good deal of political fumbling ensued, and the fumbling then-governor, David Paterson, couldn’t or wouldn’t bring it about. Enter Kirsten Gillibrand. She was appointed by the governor and then won on her own. She is a nice conventional Democratic hack. Caroline would have made a senator you’d have to listen to, even if it was only because she was a Kennedy. But she is not like some of her cousins. She is serious. Nothing sordid has ever been attributed to her. (Nor to her lamented brother, who couldn’t resist a typical ambition of the very rich to fly, but was otherwise a hardworking journalist who wanted very much to be the editor of a serious magazine.)

(Getty Images)

It seems to me, though, that Caroline’s wish to be the president’s designee in Tokyo is the last act for the Kennedys. They’ve been upstaged among the Democrats by the Clintons, maybe even by Chelsea Clinton, if you can believe it. On the Republican side, we’ve already had George I and George II in the White House. And there’s another son/brother waiting in the wings. Hey, we started out with the Adams family and we survived even the grim Education of their prodigal Henry. A later prodigal, Thomas Boylston Adams, ran for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 1966, following a similarly disastrous run in the Bay State four years earlier by the grandson of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. “Peace candidates” they were called, and I was involved with both. Alas.

No such hoity-toity aims animate the pols in the Kennedy family. Ted’s son left Rhode Island’s seat in the House with a sickness that resembles that of Jesse Jackson’s heir. The new Kennedy in Congress, Joseph P. Kennedy III, is the son of another congressman (Joe Kennedy II) who now runs Hugo Chavez’s “charity” oil company for some of America’s poor families, at a salary of around $600,000. Once, long ago, we just about came to blows in the lobby of a Washington hotel. His bodyguards or whatever separated us. But this was not the worst of Joe’s troubles. He left politics. That’s the good news. The better news is that his son and namesake is a serious person with serious attainments in his young life. Robert Kennedy’s family has been the most seriously afflicted by wealth, fame, power, drugs, killer sports, a bizarre mother and an assassinated father who was no instance of virtue in his personal relations. (And lest one forget, he was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist.) Young Bobby, the attorney general’s son and a very bright student of mine, was a roommate of Eric Breindel’s.

There is a Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway in Boston, an urban island of soft gardens and soon a carousel. Maybe some people know who this Kennedy was. In a few years, only the Kennedy cultists will know, and they will not remind you of the suffering that she, the former president’s mother, experienced as paterfamilias Joseph Kennedy’s betrothed. There is also in Central Park a Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir to “commemorate her contributions to New York.” It is true that she jogged in the park and that her Fifth Avenue apartment overlooked the place that has been named for her.

Of course, all over the country there are memorials to her husband. But JFK’s presidency has also been undergoing reappraisals. In my view, there were two great moments to his term in office. One was his rhetorical link in Berlin to the victims of Stalinism: “ich bin ein Berliner.” The other was his staring down Krushchev when the Soviet leader and his comrade Castro had brought the world to the edge of war in the Cuban missile crisis. Brother Robert has also been memorialized around the country. For what achievements, I do not know. Four years ago, the New York State Department of Transportation announced that it was about to spend $4 million to change the name of the Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. Last month, I asked my taxi driver to take the Kennedy Bridge on my ride from Manhattan to LaGuardia. He said: “What?” And then he suggested instead that, given the time and the traffic, it would be faster and cheaper to take the Edward Koch bridge on 59th Street. Which we did. And yes, he knew who Mr. Koch was.

editorial@observer.com

Michelle Obama.

Shindigger doesn’t do early mornings. But when Michelle Obama and her husband (perhaps you’ve heard of him?) come a-calling, we suddenly become quite awake—and available. Thanks to our friend Tim Morehouse, the silver-medal-winning Olympic fencer, we were invited to attend the 135th White House Easter Egg Roll this past Monday.

We set our alarm for 3 a.m., and Shindigger and Mr. Morehouse booked it down to D.C. just in time to be among the first of the 30,000-plus invitees to arrive. Guests included politicians, athletes, do-gooders and lottery-winning families, all of whom would soon wreak havoc on the White House’s South Lawn.

Let’s Move!, the first lady’s initiative to get America’s children fit and active, was the driving theme behind this year’s festivities. By 8.30 a.m., thousands of kids could be seen rushing through obstacle courses, playing field hockey with Olympic team members, shooting hoops, dancing at a series of concerts and even dabbling in acrobatic yoga—all in the Obamas’ backyard.

“I got invited and I couldn’t say no,” NFL star Anquan Boldin told Shindigger during the first social session. “It’s a great opportunity to come and mingle. I’ve heard about this event for a couple years. I was here last year.”

And that wasn’t his first visit to the executive mansion.

“After winning the national championship at Florida State, I got invited,” Mr. Boldin explained. As he had just been traded from the Super Bowl-winning Baltimore Ravens, it was unclear if Mr. Boldin would be coming to visit the president as part of the team’s victory lap.

After some more coffee, Shindigger tried to make friends with Oscar-nominated Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild), with whom we had been escorted through the VIP entrance at the East Gate. She looked spunky in a loud pink-and-rose ensemble, complete with a white-and-magenta puppy purse, and was presently queueing up to enter the White House and kick it with Mrs. Obama.

“What do you do to stay fit?” Mr. Morehouse asked the 9-year-old actress.

“Just dancin’,” she said, crossing her arms with a touch of sass.

“Wanna show us your dancin’ movies?” he asked, bopping to a nonexistent beat.

“Mmmm, mmmm,” she buzzed with an unimpressed look on her face.

A few minutes later, Robby Novak, who plays “Kid President” in a viral video series (and appeared as the “president” in the White House’s April Fool’s Day video), exited onto the Truman Balcony with the Easter Bunny, and thus began the presidential welcome. Jessica Sanchez belted out a rousing rendition of the National Anthem, and then President Barack Obama took the podium.

“When does Bo and Lady Obama come out?” one nearby youngster asked his guardian. Even Mr. Obama could sense he was playing second fiddle on this day.

“And I now want to introduce the star of the Obama family, my wife, the first lady, Michelle Obama.”

Followed by much applause.

“So today, we want you to have a great time. We want you to run around,” Mrs. Obama said. “We’re going to come down and do some Easter egg roll. We’re going to read some stories. But overall, we want you guys to have a good time and keep moving and be healthy.”

Then, as the superstar first family descended toward the lawn, all hell broke loose (and only one day after Easter!). Parents jostled for that perfect iPhone shot. Some hoisted their children into the air for a closer look.

We looked to get out of the scrum and ran into another hardbody.

“They called me up and asked me if I wanted to participate,” Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson told Shindigger, as screeching little tykes darted around him, knocking into inflatable tackling dummies.

We asked Mr. Peterson if he had met the Obamas and if he had refrained from subjecting them to his notoriously bone-crunching handshake.

“I didn’t wanna get tackled by Secret Service or anything,” he said with a laugh. “So I took it easy on the president, but I got a little peck on the check from Mrs. Obama. It was pretty cool.”

That’s more than Shindigger could say. Where was our presidential kiss, we wondered? Come to think of it, where were our glasses of wine? Between toddlers screaming for Dora the Explorer and Jordin Sparks’s crooning, a glass of red would have been perfect for our fitness regimen.

We then decided to investigate the food situation back in the roped-off tent area.

“I was on the basketball court when Obama came down,” said Subway spokesman Jared Fogle, who was handing out sandwiches to volunteers. “It’s like a tailgate, but with water and healthy food—and a lot of kids.”

It did indeed feel like some sporting event. Case in point: race car driver Danica Patrick was making her first-ever pit stop at the White House. “I got to meet the whole family, including the dog,” she said, adding that the president’s knowledge of NASCAR was impressive.

Shindigger asked if she had spotted U.K. boy band The Wanted creeping around the South Lawn.

“I don’t know who they are,” she whispered.

“They’re right in front of you,” we whispered back, pointing toward the East Wing.

“Where?” she said. “I have no idea what ‘the wanted’ is, but the kids these days—they find out about stuff first.”

Probably because they wake up so damn early.

Wendell Pierce at the inauguration.

You probably know him as Bunk, a k a Detective William Moreland, who teamed with Detective Jimmy McNulty in HBO’s The Wire. Or maybe music’s your thing, and you know him as Antoine Batiste, the trombonist who fronts Antoine Batiste and his Soul Apostles on Treme, another HBO hit.

As the star of two shows that have earned cult followings, plus memorable appearances on Law & Order and Third Watch, it’s likely you know New Orleans native Wendell Pierce from somewhere.

Mr. Pierce was on hand Monday for the inauguration of President Barack Obama, and while he was there to celebrate the country’s leader, he had plenty of time for the dozens of fans who stopped by to pay homage. He was exceedingly gracious, smiling through autographs and handshakes and making time for anyone with a camera.

Though his job likely puts him in a tax bracket most can only dream of, Mr. Pierce seemed to identify with Mr. Obama’s populist message, joining in the applause when the president spoke of the “shrinking few” who do very well and the “growing many barely making it.”

Bunk proved he’s not just another bobblehead in pancake makeup when one well-wisher asked what he was up to these days. Pierce rolled through the on-screen projects he’s part of, before the fan interrupted to ask about the “real work.”

“That’s the acting. What about the things you’re doing in New Orleans?” asked the man, who was in from New Jersey.

“We’re trying to rebuild,” Mr. Pierce said. “Always trying.”

Since Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Pierce has made rebuilding the battered city his cause. To that end, the actor and two partners are opening a chain of grocery stores in the city designed to serve “food deserts”—low-income neighborhoods that have been without access to quality fresh food since the storm. Mr. Pierce was also instrumental in the construction of a green community in Pontchartrain Park, the neighborhood where he grew up.

It’s no surprise Mr. Pierce trekked to D.C. for the inauguration. He served as a surrogate for Mr. Obama during his campaign and was a visible presence at the Democratic National Convention last fall. He also raised at least $50,000 as one of Mr. Obama’s team of celebrity bundlers. What was a nice surprise, however—and possibly a very early sign of the harmony the president said he would seek in his second term—was seeing a Hollywood star stand in the cold for as long as it took his many fans to wrangle their iPhones into Instagram mode.

(Chobani.com)

Seeing as President Barack Obama once wore yogurt at a Boulder, Co., event last spring, it’s mildly surprising that the very same dairy treat has been selected to be part of January 21's Presidential Inauguration.

U.S. Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who is the Chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC), announced today that both Chobani and Fage yogurt will be served before the Inaugural Luncheon. We suppose Senator Schumer missed our cover story on the cruel tyranny of yogurt.

The President, however, is well-acquainted with yogurt's evil side. Many will remember an incident this past April when an overly excited college student spilled a healthy helping of a certain purple snack straight on to the POTUS's pants.

"You got me!” Obama joked at the time, adding "Getting yogurt on the president, you've got a story to tell."

Instead of choosing New York's most well-known export, cynicism, the Senator chose Greek yogurt to represent the state—Fage is produced in Johnstown, N.Y., and Chobani in New Berlin, N.Y.—no doubt forgetting the President's previous history with the dairy product. Sadly, the exemplary form of yogurt--Go-Gurt--will not be present.

Sixty dignitaries, including the President and Vice President and their families, will have enough plain and vanilla yogurt on hand to coat the Commander in Chief from head to toe. Strawberries, pineapples, pears and granola will also be offered as toppings, for those who prefer their yogurt with extra lumps. The yogurt will be available in the U.S. Capitol building throughout the day on the 21^st, leading up to the official luncheon.

The Senator's office refused to identify whether either of the brands selected was the very culture culprit party to the President's past indiscretion.

Photo illo: Ed Johnson.

Having won a (temporary) victory in our now-endless budget battle, President Obama is now free to pursue the agenda that he’s laid out for his second term. As gleaned from various statements and media interviews, this includes: securing our withdrawal from Afghanistan, passing immigration reform, doing something about global climate change, doing something about gun control, “stabilizing” and “growing” the economy, fixing our infrastructure, making us energy independent and, of course, education.

Sorry, that sound you just heard was America’s head hitting the desk.

Mr. Obama could not possibly have put forward these proposals in any more obscure a manner, or with any less eloquence or passion. The president’s disdain for practical politics is already legend; his general disposition now seems to be devolving into somnambulism. Surely, no Democratic president since Grover Cleveland—and very few presidents, period—has staked out a less ambitious agenda for his second term. The stuff on the list that sounds good will never get done, and the rest doesn’t much matter.

Immigration reform is the one possible exception, as Republicans belatedly realize their party is demographically doomed if they don’t start catering to more than aged white American males.

Afghanistan is already history, an unpopular war in a dreadful place. Our exit will be messy no matter how it’s finessed, and the locals will immediately revert to their second-favorite occupation, killing each other.

Infrastructure repair is a fine idea, and a badly needed one. It’s dead-on-arrival with House Republicans, due to its “second stimulus” appearance. Don’t take the Tappan Zee.

Education reform is the mashed potatoes of politics, a meaningless mass that always looks good on the plate. “A better economy” is the big fat pat of butter you plop in the middle of the mashed potatoes. Gun control of any kind will be blocked by the right wing in Congress. President Obama was never able to summon much passion for the subject, and every day the horrors of Sandy Hook recede further into the blur of a dozen previous such atrocities.

Mr. Obama did some marginally good things about climate change in his first term—a high-speed rail line here, higher mileage standards for Detroit there—but overall, he’s never displayed much enthusiasm on this subject, either. For starters, doing anything about the climate will run smack into his stated desire for “energy independence,” which is now defined as a full-throttle, stunningly irresponsible orgy of deep-water oil drilling, fracking and—oh yeah, my favorite—“clean coal.” The president barely mentioned global warming during the campaign. He then set a speed record in cutting the throat of his own “priority” by citing the lack of any will to make the “tough political choices” necessary to save the world, claiming that “I’m pretty certain” no consensus exists in Washington on the subject, and adding—just in case we didn’t get the point—that “This one’s hard.”

Ah, so it is. Seems not so long ago that we had a president who told us, “We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

No more. Mr. Obama is not formally a part of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), but over the last four years, he has proven himself to be a de facto member of that runaway conservative caucus, filling his cabinet with veterans from the administration of the last DLC president, Bill Clinton, who’ve been filling his mind with their ideas. And like them, he has served mostly as a manager of decline, of America’s retreat from what it was and what it can be in the world.

Ever since the Civil War, the Republicans have been the truly radical party in America, the Democrats the conciliators. For better or worse, Republicans have embraced or fomented ideas—abolition, suffrage, Social Darwinism, laissez-faire economics, progressivism, prohibition, modern conservatism—that have challenged and divided the country, and pushed it into brave new worlds.

Democrats have generally tried to reconcile and explain Americans to each other. Sometimes this has been a really bad idea—such as trying to appease Southern slave owners, or later the Klan—while often it has meant accepting immigrants, or co-opting and bringing into the political mainstream ideas like populism, civil rights, the labor movement, feminism and gay rights.

The rise of the DLC—whose ideas now dominate the leadership of the Democratic party, if not its rank and file—represented something else altogether, a capitulation to the basic premises of Reaganism, the latest radical Republican idea.

As a result, both parties have now presided over a generation-long decline of the middle and working classes—something unprecedented in American history. Since the start of the 1980s, income and living standards for most Americans have declined, wages have lagged far behind rises in productivity, the public sector and workers’ rights have been steadily whittled away, and the disparity between the very wealthy and the rest of us has reverted to 1920s levels. The industrial base has been increasingly converted to a finance-based economy, which has led to a regular series of debilitating financial crashes—the savings and loan debacle, the tech boom bust, the market meltdown of 2008—that have further squandered our national wealth.

The Democrats have proven to be the most scrupulous stewards of this new shrinking America—shrinking not just in economic size but in vision and ambition—as Reaganism itself has proven to be a hollow gong and Republicans’ latest bold radical ideas have blasted off into the la-la lands of Ayn Rand, creationism and government by the gun, for the gun, of the gun. The traveling freak show the party trotted out for last year’s presidential primaries was probably enough right there to turn much of the country back to Obama, and understandably so.

Yet the Republican accusation hurled at the president throughout the campaign (inchoate and misdirected though it often was) that he was merely presiding over decline held some validity.

Mr. Obama and his DLC allies see no real role for either a working class or a public sector in the America of the future. It’s why their meat is financial crises and complex fiscal “bargains.” As President Obama has also repeatedly signaled, some of the things he’s willing to trim to achieve “economic stability” in these negotiations are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits—likely with the idea of, someday, privatizing them altogether.

Obama & Co. pride themselves on being “pragmatists” in making such deals, and have no patience for outsider movements of any kind, even those peopled mostly by their own constituents.

Stopping climate change is, for them, pie-in-the-sky stuff, because it doesn’t have the votes. But like many people who pride themselves on their practicality, Mr. Obama can’t see the forest for the toppled trees. The $60 billion or so our local representatives are now trying to squeeze out of Congress is intended to patch up exactly one storm. It’s also a year’s worth of the new tax revenues the administration just had such a struggle squeezing out of the rich. So much for climate change’s irrelevance to the future.

When it comes to America, you might as well try to do the hard thing.

editorial@observer.com

Illustration by Jason Seiler

Amid all the speculation about Barack Obama’s newfound mojo, a hotly anticipated stiffening of his political spine inspired by his decisive victory in November, a somewhat more intriguing question has scarcely been asked.

Will Michelle finally step out?

The Harvard-trained attorney has always been, for those on the right, a more threatening character than her husband. After all, Mr. Obama merely received that famous fist bump—or as Fox News had it, “terrorist fist jab”—in the moments before delivering his speech at the Democratic National Convention; Michelle initiated it. It was she who revealed that the future president woke up “snore-y and stinky” in the morning, part of the campaign’s aggressive bid to humanize him that had the side effect of further elevating her (After all, if America’s demigod wakes up less than perfect, what would she think of us?) And it was Michelle who included a line about how the nation is “just downright mean” and “guided by fear”—in her 2008 stump speech—and once notoriously allowed that she was “for the first time in my adult lifetime ... really proud of my country.” And, of course, it was Michelle who finally extended the right to “bare arms” to political spouses and, as the Times Style section put it, “spurred an epidemic of sleevelessness.”

My goodness, the guns on that woman!

Whether the infamous “whitey” video—a Holy Grail of the right, in which Michelle is said to employ the dated epithet—ever existed at all outside the fever dreams of dirty trickster Roger Stone Jr. (which it almost definitely did not), the first lady has worked hard to dispel our fears. Over the last four years, the perceived Angela Davis-style radical has been replaced by a smoothly competent political professional, whose causes seem more Lady Bird Johnson than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Not that there haven’t been a few missteps: wearing Lanvin sneakers to a food bank, eating Shake Shack (albeit in moderation) despite her healthy-food exhortations and hugging Queen Elizabeth. In general, though, Ms. Obama has been a notably careful FLOTUS, campaigning for exercise (what could be less controversial than that?) and embodying the role of wholesome mom-in-chief. Far from reinventing the job of first lady, the first black woman to set up house in the East Wing has turned out to be something of a traditionalist. At least so far. Now, with the exigencies of a second presidential campaign behind her, some are hoping Ms. Obama will finally let her freak flag—whatever that might look like—fly.

“There’s this sense that the real Michelle Obama, this endearingly frank woman we met in the spring of 2008, is going to come back to the fore,” noted New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor. “I think any change in her during the presidency is going to be one of degree. The real change is going to be in the post-presidency. Once she’s out of the White House and her husband will no longer hold office, she truly will be liberated. She will still be a young woman, and she’ll be one of the most famous and influential women in the world.”

“For first ladies, I do think second terms tend to be a bit more interesting,” said Daily Beast fashion writer Robin Givhan, whose beat is the intersection of style and politics and who has often written about Michelle. “It was in the second term when Laura Bush spoke out about Burma. So I will be intrigued to see if Mrs. Obama decides that she’s going to add a third leg to her platform, which now is divided between the support of military personnel and the Let’s Move campaign.”

While Ms. Givhan declined to speculate as to what that third project might be, conservatives are plainly terrified. As a piece on Right Side News ominously put it, “Much like Hillary, she will be assigned more involvement in affairs of state, appointed to committees, and public appearances of a political nature will become more frequent, not to speak of a barrage of friendly television repartee on shows like The View, late night talk, and more. In essence, the grooming will begin.”

Blame Ms. Clinton for the lofty expectations: the former first lady-turned-well-liked senator-turned-presidential candidate-turned-secretary of state-turned-beloved Internet meme is the new paradigm for first ladies. (Even Laura Bush, the very picture of a traditional political spouse, went on an extensive book tour in 2010, during which she spoke out on her policy differences from her husband. Turns out she’s pro-gay marriage and supports Roe v. Wade!)

Ms. Obama, in spite of her rather rocky introduction, has the skill set of a politician, as she amply demonstrated with her 2012 Democratic National Convention speech, in which she passionately recounted the story of her early marriage and her dad’s health struggles, making Ann Romney’s tuna-salad recollections look hopelessly drab and out of touch. Though Ms. Obama was hardly the first first lady to get an advanced degree or work outside the home—Laura Bush has a master’s and was a teacher and librarian, and Nancy Davis acted in films after her marriage to Ronald Reagan—she was the first one to have a higher-profile career than her husband for a time. While Barack was working on his memoir and commuting between Chicago and Springfield as a state senator, Michelle was climbing the ladder at the University of Chicago Hospitals system; even when he became a U.S. senator, she was the spouse bringing home the real bacon. It’s not surprising that with Illinois Senator Mark Kirk up for re-election in 2016, speculation has already emerged that Michelle will make a run at the seat. A recent poll had her trouncing the Republican 51 to 40 percent. Trouble is, the first lady may not be interested.

In her book The Obamas, Ms. Kantor reported that Michelle Obama strongly considered the idea of remaining in Chicago and letting Barry turn the White House into a bachelor pad in order to allow little Sasha and Malia to continue their school year in Chicago. “It’s hard to overstate how little she wanted to go into politics,” Ms. Kantor told The Observer, “and it wasn’t just because of the family reasons she sometimes cites. She had a real objection to the nature of politics. She thought it wasn’t the right way to create social change.”

She’s disappointed liberals before. Many expected her to advocate strongly for progressive causes during her husband’s first term, but she largely kept quiet. Historian and America’s First Ladies author Betty Boyd Caroli said that she’d expected Mrs. Obama to more aggressively champion the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, for instance. “I was disappointed,” Ms. Caroli said. “I expected her to be Superwoman. But it doesn’t work that way. Enough voters, it is feared, are not ready.”

And blame Hillary Clinton for that, too, having so disastrously overreached with health-care reform. “Everybody learned a lesson from that. It’s not good to be too political as a first lady,” said Dr. Caroli. (The PR disaster was compounded by Mrs. Clinton’s maelstrom of press over everything from Whitewater to her ever-evolving hairdo, and the fact that her ambitions for a time outpaced her political talent.)

The result: Hillary entered the East Wing as a full-throated political player and left as a Vogue cover-girl and hostess.

“Hillary’s trajectory was the opposite of Michelle’s,” noted Rebecca Traister, the author of Big Girls Don’t Cry, a book about women and the 2008 election.

As for Ms. Obama, the conservative blogosphere still lights up with outrage whenever the healthy-eating crusader is seen nibbling a French fry, but the first lady’s childhood-obesity-prevention campaign Let’s Move and her advocacy on behalf of military families are not exactly Hillarycare. As Ms. Kantor noted, “There’s the question with Let’s Move about how aggressive and confrontational she was willing to be when it came to taking on corporate interests. With the military families initiative, is it rah-rah patriotic, or does it get into darker material? I’m curious to see how complete and thorough a conversation she wants to have with the country about the issues veterans face.”

In the first term, Mrs. Obama’s “mom-in-chief” moniker, derided by the left, allowed her to occupy an apolitical space. “There was some frustration among women, thinking she should do more,” said Anita McBride, former chief of staff to Laura Bush and a scholar of the history of first ladies. “But the women’s movement is about choice, and this was her choice.”

Others agree that Ms. Obama’s old-school approach during the first term was in itself somewhat radical. “I consider myself a feminist,” noted MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry. “But I’m also a critic of second-wave feminism, which was bourgeois, white middle class, and said that work done outside the home is the most liberating kind of work. That ignores the fact that through vast periods of U.S. history, black women were not provided the income or space that they could make that decision. I find it kind of subversive and interesting that a black woman with a law degree from Harvard who’d been the primary breadwinner through college said, ‘I’m going to do what generations of white women have done, do the Junior League kind of work.’”

But even Dr. Harris-Perry sees an untapped political potential in the first lady. She cited Ms. Obama’s work negotiating between the University of Chicago and the city’s South Side: “It’d be really interesting to see if she could navigate that at a higher level—bridging this gap between the powerful and well-resourced and those that are being denigrated.”

Besides, a certain distaste for politics might just turn out to be an asset, creating a sense that, should she venture into the arena, she would be doing it not because she wants to—heaven forbid—but because her country truly needs her. A “Michelle Obama 2016” T-shirt with a snazzy stars-and-bars design can be found for about $25 on Google Shopping.

Ms. Traister compared Michelle to another formerly nonpolitical person who ended up taking out a sitting Republican senator. “Elizabeth Warren is somebody who did not have a political career, who was tremendously influential in terms of how we see the chasm between rich and poor,” Ms. Traister noted. Ms. Obama, she said, “could get very active in immigration reform, she could start talking about climate change.”

Dr. Harris-Perry had a different role model in mind: a first lady who, as “a dutiful soldier,” kept silent about her disagreements with her husband during his presidency but campaigned vociferously as a conscience of the Democratic party in the years that followed: Eleanor Roosevelt. “She became the legacy; she held the Democrats’ feet to the fire. She was very active in party leadership,” Dr. Harris-Perry said, adding that Ms. Obama “might be able to be a kind of queen-maker for women running for office. I could see her on the campaign trail.”

“It’s very natural for that to be the next-step fantasy for people who appreciate her brilliance—oh, she’ll run for office!” Ms. Traister said. “One thing all those who want her to run could think about is other jobs she may want to have in her life, using her own model of working within communities. We need to be aware of is not letting her identity as a former first lady hold her back from having an independent life.”

Then again, you never know. Back in the 1990s, Dr. Caroli predicted that Hillary Clinton would never run for office: “She didn’t look at ease with groups of people,” she said. “But people change!”

And if they don’t, there’s always Sasha and Malia. 2040, perhaps?

UPDATE: This is how the Empire State Building appeared last night after CNN called the election for Barack Obama (since 2000, the Democrats have traditionally been "blue"). 

CNN has announced via press release that they'll be lighting the Empire State Building tonight to honor the winner of the Presidential election.

If the network calls Mitt Romney as the winner, the tower will blaze red; if President Obama is re-elected, blue will light the night. Until that point, the building will be lit in red, white, and blue stripes along its facade and half-red and half-blue atop its mast.

Given the closeness of this election, though, we may not see either light tonight; we just hope the winner is declared before November 13, so that CNN doesn't step on the toes of the planned green, white, and red lights in honor of the Radio City Christmas show.

Illustration by Zina Saunders.

Barack Obama won a second term as president. But the biggest political player of the election cycle, it’s fair to say, was Hurricane Sandy, an 85 m.p.h. deus ex machina that provided a boost to Mr. Obama and gave Mitt Romney a steep hurdle to overcome as he headed into the home stretch. Karl Rove said so much himself on Friday, even as hard-hit communities were still without power.

“If you hadn’t had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy,” he pointed out to The Washington Post. “When you have attention drawn away to somewhere else, to something else, it is not to his advantage.”

He would say that, of course. He had to say something, after all, to preemptively soften the blow for disappointed donors who had funded his months-long anti-Obama ad blitz to the tune of some $171.5 million. We thought it was in the bag, guys, but who can predict a hurricane?

Mr. Rove knows the game. He saw firsthand how an unexpected calamity can thoroughly alter the political landscape as well as the physical one. The 9/11 attacks offered President George W. Bush opportunities for optics both bad (My Pet Goat) and good (the Megaphone Moment). Years later, FEMA’s tragically failed response to Hurricane Katrina and Mr. Bush’s ill-conceived support for Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown seriously damaged his presidency. (Just in case we needed a reminder of that disaster, Mr. Brown appeared in the Globe and Mail just two days after Sandy hit, urging New Yorkers to “just chill.”)

Crass as it is to point out, when the dust settles, Sandy will have left more in her wake than 100 deaths and untold billions in damage. The storm also upended the political field, offering elected officials and hopefuls alike a sudden array of unexpected risks and opportunities, scrambling the ideological calculus, reconfiguring alliances and laying bare much of the established rhetoric (particularly as it pertains to climate change and the proper role of government). President Obama was offered a gimme—the chance to act as comforter-in-chief and to demonstrate the beneficence of the federal government, while Mitt Romney was relegated to the sidelines, at least when he wasn’t being asked about his past suggestion that we eliminate FEMA altogether.

Meanwhile, Governors Cuomo and Christie, both widely regarded as potential presidential candidates for 2016, were able to demonstrate their ability to lead in a crisis, and Mayor Bloomberg got to erase any lingering memories of his Bermuda sojourn during the so-called “Snowpocalypse” of 2010.If only it weren’t for that marathon misstep—advocated, someone made sure to inform The New York Times, by his predecessor Rudolph Giuliani—he’d have turned in a pitch-perfect performance himself.

All of them were working on instinct. On the national level, many years of careful preparation and billions spent on focus groups, push polls, talking points and microtargeting were suddenly gone with the wind. Even with the lights flickering, the optics became high-def: everyone went off-message—they had to—and suddenly what mattered was the human touch, bluster and reflexes.

And, of course, leadership. That thing people elect them for in the first place.

Sometimes it takes a perfect storm to blow away all that hot air.

AROUND THE TIME MR. ROVE was evaluating the hurricane’s impact on the presidential race, Newark Mayor Cory Booker was hosting more than a dozen of his storm-tossed constituents at his home in the Upper Clinton Hill neighborhood. This was retail politics taken to an extreme: after sending out an invitation via Twitter, Mr. Booker opened his home to anyone who needed a crash pad, then brought in heaping trays of chicken, fish, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, corn bread and candied yams from a local restaurant. Families snuggled up wherever they could, and exhausted local children zoned out in front of a DVD of Happy Feet, ate Halloween candy and molded animals out of Play-Doh.

If they’d had enough of the stuff, they might have sculpted a giant bust of the mayor and slapped it up on Mount Rushmore. He’d earned it.

“It meant—I can’t even explain,” Alice Bell, one of the neighbors who took refuge in Mr. Booker’s home, told The Observer, her voice cracking with emotion. “I mean, we were—I’m still overwhelmed that he would reach out to us like that.”

Mr. Booker has long enjoyed a reputation as a “supermayor” for his hands-on style. (Remember the time he rushed into a burning building to save a woman from a house fire? His constituents do.)

But while Mr. Booker, who oversees a city of under 300,000 citizens, is a master of the personal touch—and of Twitter—that option is less realistic for state and federal politicians and mayors like Michael Bloomberg, whose constituents number in the millions. (Though, had he opened his Upper East Side townhouse, which is valued at over $30 million, it would have been quite a story.)

Mr. Booker’s response—apolitical as it seemed—was brilliant politics. “The best thing that a politician can do is keep away from politics and go volunteer, help out in giving out meals to the area, console the people that have been devastated and, in effect, give everyone a huge hug,” said political consultant George Arzt. “Don’t get in the way of first responders. You’re there as reassurance for people and inspiration.”

Mr. Christie, for his part, was so eager to avoid politics he wound up stumbling right into them. “If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me,” he told Steve Doocy when asked about his extraordinarily warm embrace of Mr. Obama, prompting The New York Post to suggest that he make sure to reiterate his endorsement of Mr. Romney “or the Republican party will never forgive him.”

That said, given the widespread praise that has greeted Mr. Christie’s handling of the disaster, they might just have to.

WHILE THERE IS NO REAL POLITICAL playbook when it comes to handling disasters, politicians have been working on it for millennia now. Emperor Titus’s quick response to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius—and the massive fire that consumed much of Rome the following year—earned him approving shout-outs from the ancient press corps.

“In these many great calamities he showed not merely the concern of an emperor, but even a father’s surpassing love, now offering consolation in edicts, and now lending aid so far as his means allowed,” wrote the historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.

Even unelected monarchs can be dethroned when they whiff on a major catastrophe. Emperor Haile Selassie I’s perceived mismanagement of the Wollo famine led to his overthow in 1974 in a Marxist military coup.

Former Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic saw his hopes for re-election buried along with his city after what was considered a lackluster response to a blizzard. “In the end, God sent us 100 inches of snow in sub-zero weather, and I happened to lose and election because of it,” he would later reflect.

Mr. Bush’s job approval rating plummeted in September 2005, after his administration’s widely criticized response to Katrina—which included the misbegotten Air Force One flyover that led to one of the most damaging photo ops in history. The outcry was perhaps best summed up by rapper Kanye West, who proclaimed during a telethon that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Five years later, in his memoir, Decision Points, Mr. Bush described the post-Katrina criticism from Mr. West and others as an “all time low” in his presidency.

“Emergency and disaster response is one of the most fundamental functions of government at every level,” noted Michael Tobman, a Brooklyn-based political consultant. “If it is bungled, as the Bush administration did with Katrina, it is never forgotten and never overlooked.”

NO DOUBT AWARE OF THE EXPERIENCES of his predecessors, on Monday, as the storm approached, Mr. Obama cancelled a planned campaign rally in the crucial battleground state of Florida and flew back to Washington. Even when the campaign resumed after a three-day pause, Mr. Obama’s traveling campaign press secretary made sure the public knew it was of secondary concern.

“I’ve spent the last two days with him ... in between every single event, he basically walks off the stage, gets on a phone call with governors or mayors or first responders—he’s on calls in the car, he’s on calls in the plane,” Jennifer Psaki said.

Contrary to the imaginings of some right-wing conspiracy theorists, Mr. Obama didn’t engineer the storm to juice his candidacy, but he handled it magnificently, leading to a windfall of unexpected praise from one of his chief detractors, Mr. Christie. The hurricane also brought a late-breaking endorsement of the president by Mayor Bloomberg, who had previously refrained from backing either of the candidates.

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast—in lost lives, lost homes and lost business—brought the stakes of Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” Mayor Bloomberg wrote in an op-ed on, where else, Bloomberg View.

Along with kind words from his political colleagues, President Obama also experienced something of a storm surge in public opinion polls. Mr. Romney, on the other hand, found himself politically high and dry. Like Mr. Obama’s team, Mr. Romney’s campaign made the decision to cancel several of his planned events as Sandy bore down on the East Coast Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, he and his aides hastily converted a planned Ohio “victory rally” into a “storm relief event.” According to a report in BuzzFeed, the Romney campaign hastily purchased $5,000 worth of supplies for the recovery effort to serve as props for supporters to “donate” at the event. The faux donations and blatantly political elements of the “storm relief event,” including a promotional video and “victory rally” badges handed out to reporters, led to a deluge of bad press.

INITIALLY, MAYOR BLOOMBERG’S handling of the storm was deemed exemplary. He ordered an evacuation of the city’s low-lying areas and opened city shelters while aggressively sounding the alarm before the floodwaters rolled in. Later, his low-key if businesslike demeanor in a series of press conferences (enlivened by his intriguingly effusive ASL interpreter) was almost soothing in its professorial tranquility.

Calm in a storm can only take you so far, though, as Mr. Bloomberg discovered in subsequent days. Fuel shortages, looting and continued power outages led to angry residents and harsh headlines. Those emotions faded as the city’s infrastructure returned and lights started to flicker on, but Mr. Bloomberg’s convincing performance of nonchalance may have turned prematurely into the real thing: as part of his effort to maintain a sense of normalcy, he vowed to continue with the planned New York City Marathon. The decision provoked the outrage of politicians in the hard-hit outerboroughs as well as the city’s tabloids. “Like hell,” scoffed The New York Post, adding, “Mayor Mike’s trademark Manhattan myopia is back.”

The anti-marathon backlash reached such a fever pitch that, by Friday evening, a person claiming to be an employee of the race’s host, New York Road Runners, sent a blistering, if anonymous, letter to the media calling for the marathon’s cancellation.

“I feel bad writing this,” the person wrote. “I have seen friends and coworkers work incredibly hard this year and in years past to put this event together ... But for me, that is all gone ... As an employee of New York Road Runners, a New Yorker, a runner, and a person I firmly believe that holding this race is wrong.”

Eventually, Mr. Bloomberg succumbed to the pressure and cancelled the marathon. It was a rare walk-back for a mayor who rarely suffers from self-doubt—and another sign that even the most skilled politician sometimes misreads the mood in times of crisis.

Meanwhile, though most of the media attention was focused on New York City and New Jersey, Gov. Andrew Cuomo played a central role in the response efforts—and stayed in front of the cameras. Having savaged his predecessor, George Pataki, for his seemingly lackadaisical response to the 9/11 attacks—“Pataki stood behind the leader,” he said at the time. “He held the leader’s coat ... Cream rises to the top, and Rudy Giuliani rose to the top”—Mr. Cuomo seized control of the response.  The storm saw the typically media-shy governor sitting down for interviews with several national television news hosts including Anderson Cooper, Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer and Rachel Maddow. On the topic of the state’s crisis-response efforts, Mr. Cuomo couldn’t help but sound, well, presidential. And he received national attention when, sitting across from Ms. Sawyer, he boldly addressed the elephant in the room—if not quite by name.

“I think Al Gore is right,” Mr. Cuomo said, raising the specter of climate change. “We have a ‘one hundred year flood’ every two years now! I think, at this point, it is undeniable that we have a higher frequency of these extreme weather situations. We’re going to have to deal with it.”

And where the mayor tended to shrug his shoulders at certain problems he described as beyond his control, Mr. Cuomo displayed a touch of aggression. After utility companies suggested it might take 10 days or more to restore electricity in some areas, he dashed off a letter to their CEOs threatening to revoke their licenses to do business in his state—then released it to the media.

“This is not just about effort,” he said at a press conference announcing the move. “This is about getting the job done.”

Political prognostication is a more inexact science than even meteorology. But it seems altogether possible we will be seeing that clip again a few years down the road, if Mr. Cuomo takes on Mr. Christie in 2016, Mr. Bloomberg endorses someone or other, and Mr. Booker solves the global warming crisis, reversing time itself by racing around the earth’s axis backward, really, really fast.

hwalker@observer.com

ccampbell@observer.com

This story has been updated to reflect the result of the presidential election.