Network and Govern
By John Kornblum

With Obama, the U.S. enters an age of postmodern, consensus government. This could cause difficulties for Europe.

In coming years, millions of people will remember exactly what they were doing on January 20, 2009, when Barack Obama was sworn in as the forty-fourth President of the United States.

Millions of people will converge on Washington to celebrate this day; billions more will watch it on television around the world. Inauguration Committee spokesman Kevin Griffith told The Washington Post: "There's a hunger out there. People want to get involved. People want to be part of this thing... a part of history."

But what sort of history? For a world exhausted by ethnic conflict, terrorism, and economic collapse, Obama's attraction comes as much from his visionary message of change as from the policies he promises to follow. Many are still asking whether there is any substance behind his inspirational words. What can America and the world expect from him really?

Barack Obama has inherited a country which is financially bankrupt and politically insolvent. He faces problems which would have been hard to imagine, even five years ago. The punishing reality of his situation is already clear to him. He is acting rapidly to gain control of the machinery of government and to add substance to the new sort of government which he promised during the campaign.

Americans traditionally give their presidents one hundred days to prove that their ideas will work. This time, many Americans and foreigners are likely to be more disoriented than usual as he seeks to attack conventional issues with his post-modern consensus form of administration.

But the millions of people his campaign mobilized for the election seemed to have understood clearly what he was saying. Their enthusiasm cannot be ascribed only to the rejection of a failed president. Obama's supporters do not want him simply to do better at governing than George Bush did. They want him to fundamentally change the way government functions.

The outpouring of idealism reflects Obama's ability to harness the power of what John Hamre, head of the prestigious Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington calls "a fundamental turning point in American politics."

The implications of such a far-reaching reordering of American political life have not yet been digested, neither in the United States nor abroad. But experience tells us that the destabilizing effects of such political upheavals in America usually spread widely throughout the world.

Twice in the past fifty years has the world order been shaken by radical political movements which emerged from the United States. The first was the free speech movement at the University of California, which spawned a youth protest culture whose influence can still be felt today.

The second was the conservative rebirth which began with Barry Goldwater's reaction against the welfare state and the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, a movement that reached its peak with Ronald Reagan and its nadir with George Bush.

These two movements had their origins in the ongoing confrontations in America and Europe which resulted from the wars and depressions of the twentieth century. They were, in essence, debates about the basic definition of the Western society which emerged from these catastrophes.

Obama sensed a widespread readiness by American voters to dispense with the anger and confrontation of these postwar conflicts. His calm, consensus-building approach reflected a sense of equilibrium, which allows the results of governing to be more important than the philosophy upon which they are based.

In fact, the most radical thing about the Obama movement is that it is not radical at all. It is actually not even a movement in the standard sense of the word.

Barack Obama motivated voters with a message of positive inspiration to help restore the trust, tolerance and competence which was lost in American political life during the cultural wars of the late twentieth century. He has made government seem important and fresh. His supporters reflect a "new normality" in an America changed radically by immigration, technology, and globalization during the last twenty-five years. They are angry at the established politicians and business leaders who allowed their country to fall behind while dealing with the massive social changes which they confront in their daily lives. They want change, positive change to revive the spirit of America. Their goals are fundamentally conservative; their methods are open and liberal, and tolerant.

But turning the excitement of the American election campaign into a sound global order at this dramatic point in history will be difficult. Already friends and opponents of the United States are hoping to guide Obama's thinking by presenting their special agendas.

Some of them are dramatic, as represented by renewed conflict in the Middle East or disputes over gas deliveries to Europe. Some are meant to be constructive and contain many good ideas. But many of the proposals so far seem to miss the point. Obama's mandate is to change fundamentally the manner in which government and politics are conducted in America. He will not work from existing agendas. His voters expect him to find new ways of defining the business of government.

We cannot know exactly how the new administration will pursue these goals. But we can find important clues in the way Obama conducted his election campaign, the types of people Obama has nominated for high positions, the way in which he will organize his administration, and the policies he and other senior appointees have enunciated.

Perhaps most important is Obama's determination to act boldly. Both his nominees and the initiatives he has announced reveal a determination to move rapidly and decisively to deal with the crushing problems he faces. He is said to have studied the examples of former presidents, in particular Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, both of whom assumed office at a time of crisis. His economic stabilization plan is bold, his diplomacy conciliatory. He will exercise presidential power actively and directly and will not tolerate those who resist change.

Obama has organized his administration around his personal pragmatism. Cabinet secretaries represent a group of diverse and experienced leaders - the best that America has to offer. There are no ideologues in the group. To underscore his activism, Obama has set up parallel structures in the White House and in several of the departments. Special White House assistants will work on most of the areas already covered by the cabinet secretaries. In the State Department, special envoys will be appointed to deal with dangerous crisis areas. In other words, there will be several centers of activity, often on the same issue.

This interlocking group of senior officials mirrors the manner in which Obama conducted his election campaign. Rather than establish a hierarchical organization, he built interlocking networks of advisors and campaign officials. These networks were fed into the most advanced internet-based support network ever seen in an American election. Millions of people were contacted regularly over this network to ensure that they felt like part of the operation. It was also one of the most efficient fund-raising operations ever seen.

He will continue to govern through this network as well. This parallel structure will help build consensus for the difficult decisions ahead. Returning to Washington from his Hawaii holiday, Obama announced, for example, that soon after taking office, he would embark on a nationwide speaking tour to win support for his stabilization program. He has also suggested that an early foreign trip will be to the capital of an Islamic country where he will reach out to the Muslim world. Obama's new political methods will ultimately spread beyond the borders of the United States. He will use speeches, internet video, and hundreds of small meetings, such as the ones already organized on proposals for health care reform, to promote his agenda.

A new way of dealing with political constituencies, be they domestic or foreign, will develop out of this plan. Obama is said to collect opinions from diverse sources before making a decision. But when the consultations are completed, the decisions are made quickly, as was shown in the manner in which he assembled his cabinet. The process ultimately will be "extra-territorial" in the sense that the contacts will reach far beyond America's frontiers.

This "network behavior" is typical of the new methods of communication which have revolutionized American political life. Obama is said to be fighting strongly against security officials who want to relieve him of his Blackberry, for example. In addition, web sites such as Facebook or YouTube were essential tools of the Obama campaign.

Such methods have the potential of more strongly upsetting America's allies, especially in Europe, than demands for more troops or stronger participation in crisis management could ever do. Europe has spent decades assembling old style multilateral institutions which depend on formal agreements and well defined structures of their operation. The agendas put forward by both the European Union and the German Foreign Minister reflect this static approach.

An American president who works around such structures, who reaches out to many constituencies through special advisors, is likely to be unsettling. New proposals emerging from network solutions rather than structured consultations could easily lead to frustration if the partners do not understand what is going on. Just as EU countries themselves did when reacting to the financial crisis, Obama is likely to ignore existing channels if they do not work efficiently enough.

Traditionally, the first two years of a new American administration are considered lost to serious work. Obama has sought to short-circuit this process by speeding the appointment of his team and launching his own initiatives even before he took office. He has placed high importance on consultation with close allies, his global agenda fits closely with that of Europe, and chances for good cooperation are high. But the danger of error and miscalculation will always be present. That is why it will be essential for America's partners to focus as much on the domestic roots of the new political movement which has put Obama in office as on the diplomatic initiatives which will follow.

Ambassador John Kornblum is a former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, an AICGS Trustee, and Senior Counselor at Noerr Stiefenhofer Lutz Rechtsanwälte.

A German version of this essay originally appeared in the January 18, 2009, edition of FAZ Sonntagszeitung, and in the January 23, 2009, AICGS Advisor.

To read this essay in German, please click here.