Iris responded to my post on the President’s address at the Democratic convention, underscoring that citizenship was the central theme of Obama’s speech at the Democratic Convention. Although I didn’t emphasize this, I agree and want to expand upon her point today by highlighting the president’s words and adding a few reflections. The citizenship theme, the way it was presented and imagined, not only tied the Democratic Convention itself together. It promises to make coherent the Obama campaign and contribute to the possibility of a transformational second term of the President Obama, as Andrew Sullivan explores in his Daily Beast essay today. It also has provided a way to read the day to day events of the campaign, such as the joint appearances of Romney and Obama on last night’s Sixty Minutes.

As I have emphasized, the way the president presented himself, his serious demeanor and mode of address was as important as the content of his address. Non-verbal communication mattered. But so did the verbal.  The President told a simple story with a beginning and a middle, inviting his audience to write the end. Vote. Stay active. Engage in citizenship responsibilities to your fellow citizens and country. It’s all there in his words.

He told a personal story:

Now, the first time I addressed this convention in 2004, I was a younger man, a Senate candidate from Illinois, who spoke about hope — not blind optimism, not wishful thinking, but hope in the face of difficulty; hope in the face of uncertainty; that dogged faith in the future which has pushed this nation forward, even when the odds are great, even when the road is long.

But the personal had a political – public message:

Eight years later, that hope has been tested by the cost of war, by one of the worst economic crises in history, and by political gridlock that’s left us wondering whether it’s still even possible to tackle the challenges of our time.

He wanted his audience to see the big picture. He counseled them “to keep the eye on the prize”:

I know campaigns can seem small, even silly sometimes.  Trivial things become big distractions.  Serious issues become sound bites.  The truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising.  If you’re sick of hearing me approve this message, believe me, so am I.

He comically criticized his Republican opposition:

Now, our friends down in Tampa at the Republican Convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America.  But they didn’t have much to say about how they’d make it right.  (Applause.)  They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan.  And that’s because all they have to offer is the same prescriptions they’ve had for the last 30 years — Have a surplus?  Try a tax cut.  Deficit too high?  Try another.  Feel a cold coming on?  Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations and call us in the morning.

But the joke was serious. They were proposing solutions that caused many of the problems that the country faces.

Over and over, we’ve been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way — that since government can’t do everything, it should do almost nothing.  If you can’t afford health insurance, hope that you don’t get sick.  If a company releases toxic pollution into the air your children breathe, well, that’s the price of progress.  If you can’t afford to start a business or go to college, take my opponent’s advice and borrow money from your parents.  (Laughter and applause.) As Americans, we believe we are endowed by our Creator with certain, inalienable rights — rights that no man or government can take away.  We insist on personal responsibility and we celebrate individual initiative.  We’re not entitled to success — we have to earn it.  We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk-takers, the entrepreneurs who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system, the greatest engine of growth and prosperity that the world’s ever known.

Yet more is necessary. America is a country of striving individuals, but also people with connections, commitments and responsibilities:

But we also believe in something called citizenship.  (Applause.)  Citizenship:  a word at the very heart of our founding; a word at the very essence of our democracy; the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations.

We believe that when a CEO pays his autoworkers enough to buy the cars that they build, the whole company does better.  (Applause.)  We believe that when a family can no longer be tricked into signing a mortgage they can’t afford, that family is protected, but so is the value of other people’s homes and so is the entire economy.  (Applause.)  We believe the little girl who’s offered an escape from poverty by a great teacher or a grant for college could become the next Steve Jobs or the scientist who cures cancer or the President of the United States, and it is in our power to give her that chance.  (Applause.)

As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us; it’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government.  That’s what we believe.  (Applause.)

So, you see, the election four years ago wasn’t about me.  It was about you.  (Applause.)  My fellow citizens, you were the change.  (Applause.)

He went on to highlight the major accomplishments of his first term in highly personal terms, linked with citizenship.

Healthcare reform:

You’re the reason there’s a little girl with a heart disorder in Phoenix who will get the surgery she needs because an insurance company can’t limit her coverage.  You did that.

Education reform:

You’re the reason a young man in Colorado who never thought he’d be able to afford his dream of earning a medical degree is about to get that chance.  You made that possible.

Immigration reform:

You’re the reason a young immigrant who grew up here and went to school here and pledged allegiance to our flag will no longer be deported from the only country she’s ever called home.

Gay rights:

… selfless soldiers won’t be kicked out of the military because of who they are or who they love; why thousands of families have finally been able to say to the loved ones who served us so bravely: “Welcome home.”  “Welcome home.”  You did that.  You did that.  You did that.

He returned then to his story, emphasizing citizenship responsibility:

I recognize that times have changed since I first spoke to this convention.  The times have changed, and so have I.  I’m no longer just a candidate.  I’m the President.  (Applause.)

And that means I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return.  I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

If the critics are right that I’ve made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.  (Laughter.)  And while I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved together, I’m far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, “I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.”  (Applause.)

But as I stand here tonight, I have never been more hopeful about America.  Not because I think I have all the answers.  Not because I’m naïve about the magnitude of our challenges.  I’m hopeful because of you.

The young woman I met at a science fair who won national recognition for her biology research while living with her family at a homeless shelter — she gives me hope.  (Applause.)

The autoworker who won the lottery after his plant almost closed, but kept coming to work every day, and bought flags for his whole town, and one of the cars that he built to surprise his wife — he gives me hope.  (Applause.)

The family business in Warroad, Minnesota, that didn’t lay off a single one of their 4,000 employees when the recession hit, even when their competitors shut down dozens of plants, even when it meant the owner gave up some perks and some pay because they understood that their biggest asset was the community and the workers who had helped build that business — they give me hope. (Applause.)

I think about the young sailor I met at Walter Reed hospital, still recovering from a grenade attack that would cause him to have his leg amputated above the knee.  Six months ago, we would watch him walk into a White House dinner honoring those who served in Iraq, tall and 20 pounds heavier, dashing in his uniform, with a big grin on his face, sturdy on his new leg.  And I remember how a few months after that I would watch him on a bicycle, racing with his fellow wounded warriors on a sparkling spring day, inspiring other heroes who had just begun the hard path he had traveled — he gives me hope.  He gives me hope.  (Applause.)

I don’t know what party these men and women belong to.  I don’t know if they’ll vote for me.  But I know that their spirit defines us.  They remind me, in the words of Scripture, that ours is a “future filled with hope.

And if you share that faith with me — if you share that hope with me — I ask you tonight for your vote.  (Applause.)  If you reject the notion that this nation’s promise is reserved for the few, your voice must be heard in this election.  If you reject the notion that our government is forever beholden to the highest bidder, you need to stand up in this election.

Thus, when Governor Romney criticized the forty-seven percent, Obama’s response was not simply situational and tactical, it was part of the citizenship story he told at the convention and has been telling, in fact, since he first became visible to the nation in his keynote address to the Democratic Convention of 2004.

His criticism of the Romney – Ryan plan for Medicare and healthcare reform also is part of the coherent story, not ad hoc. The same is true of his foreign policy. His sober appraisal of economic and geopolitical progress, with significant challenges ahead, informs his response to the good and bad daily news, as it is clearly built upon the tough words of President Clinton at the convention.

Obama’s appeal, the American ideal as an ideal of citizenship, individualism properly understood, as Tocqueville put it, not the naked individualism of the Republicans, informs the conduct of his campaign, including the advertising that he knows often seems silly. But it also has informed his sober actions as he has governed and hopes to continue to govern for four more years, with promise for greater success. If the citizenry supports the narrative, it is more likely Obama will win the election and have coattails, as is apparently now happening in Senate and House races. The narrative presented in the convention may also, I think likely will, constrain the opposition to his policies, as his second term begins.

The “Storyteller-in-Chief” added another chapter to “The American Story,” this time as he accepted his party’s nomination for a second term of President of the United States.

It was during the naturalization ceremony of my mother-in-law in Los Angeles, when I got my first glance at the immigrant’s American Dream: a packed auditorium of new US-citizens, exhilarated, proud and happy. When I read Jose Antonio Vargas’s article “OUTLAW: My Life As an Undocumented Immigrant” last week in The New York Times Magazine, I saw the unfulfilled version of this dream. In his article, Vargas gives an unexpected face to the more than eleven million undocumented immigrants living in the US: his own! As a successful journalist, Vargas uses his power to challenge the idea of what a US-American is. As much as I admire Vargas’s courage and hope it is not in vain, his claims are neither unambiguous nor unproblematic. On what grounds do they stand? Legality? Practice? Culture? Also, while Vargas intends to move the boundaries of what constitutes a US-American in the authoritative framework of the nation-state, do his claims not reach further? Do they not challenge the nation-state USA in terms of authoritative legitimacy? Following Vargas’s recent video on DefineAmerican.com, I want to take on his plea: “Let’s talk.”

“There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.”

The statement in the beginning of Vargas article shows two problems:

1. The general problem of the USA in sustaining a historically grown, economically integrated and sizable group of undocumented immigrants.

2. The paradoxical life-situation of these immigrants as being part of a social whole, without being legally recognized.

Where is this boundary of recognition drawn? Is it really just a matter of a piece of paper? This is what Vargas claims, as he lays out his argument woven through his life-story. Vargas came as an undocumented immigrant from the Philippines. He did not know this until he was 16 when he realized he had a fake Green Card. He still was able to get a high school and college education, work for major newspapers from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times and win a Pulitzer Prize, while hiding his lack of legal status. This is the societal basis on which he claims being American: as a successful member of society, contributing and paying taxes. But is this really all that constitutes American identity?

Ferdinand Toennies in his famous dichotomy of “Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft” defines society as based on the individual will, constituted through the social interactions this will produces. These interactions create practices, customs and laws that not only govern, but define society. The problem in Vargas’s claim is that by entering society as an undocumented immigrant, he violated a fundamental structure of law, first unknowingly, but later consciously. In terms of legality, can he really claim membership? This is at least questionable, but of course the legal frame of society is moveable. The “Dream Act” (interestingly enough just made one of its occasional reappearances on the legislative agenda) would provide such a legal shift, but as it stands will be rejected again.

The strong appeal of Vargas’s case for me actually does not lie in his claim of being US-American on the basis of society, but rather, community. Toennies defines community as social organization based on commonality. In a very 19^th century view of this conception, he specifies it in terms of the nation that this commonality is based, to different degrees, on: territory, blood (heritage) and shared beliefs (or more implicit practices leading to values). The larger communal aspect of the US nation-state is not based on blood (let’s ignore the nativism movement), but on territory, shared practice and beliefs. This is significantly different compared to other nation-states (such as my native land, Germany) that base the community of the nation mainly on blood (or at least did until 2000), which is much more exclusive. Vargas goes through some length to show how he learned, embraced and embodied language and American popular culture, how his life experience, beyond the document issue, does follow the shared practice and institutional education which makes US-Americans (Toennies actually points out that this is an important factor of communal identity formation). In terms of this understanding, Vargas truly is a US-American.

Vargas’s claim of belonging on the basis of community is therefore strong and much less conflicted than his claim on the basis of society. But the nation-state in general is an unfortunately very muddled conception based on both community and society. This becomes pretty clear if one considers again the issue of legality. I would argue that the violation of the legal structure of society has much larger implications in terms of being US-American than Vargas acknowledges. If he were right in his claim that initial legal status does not matter, that only life-practice counts, what does this mean for all the actually documented immigrants in the US? The immigrant experience – especially in the US-case – is a vital part of community, but it is based on the legal frame of society. Through their immigration practice US-society extends its reach across the borders of its territory. The filing of paper-work, waiting for permission, and interviews, are a vital part of the US-immigrant experience – starting before crossing the border. Vargas’s claim to basically decouple the definition of being US-American from the legal status of entry would not only challenge the legal system of migration. It essentially renders an important part of what has been a communal identity-building process for generations of immigrants meaningless.

Vargas’s important claims surprisingly leave the authoritative potential of borders and territory unchallenged: when he wants to “Define American,” he ignores the conception of legality that marks the boundaries of the territory. His whole claim is based on being in the USA, not how he got there. As much as I sympathize with Vargas and as much as I hope that his act revitalizes the debate and leads to change, his critique remains in the frame of the nation-state concept in general without challenging its authority. He therefore just moves the internal boundaries of definition. If one would take Vargas’s claims further, they actually can be redefined as potentialities:

1.    On the basis of society: everybody in the world can be a member of US-society. They just have to contribute.

2.    On the basis of community: everybody can be a member of the US-community. They just have to share practices and values.

Can these two potentialities only be realized on US-territory? If not, then the concept of the US nation-state is meaningless. If yes, we come back to Vargas’s initial problems, as it just shows the arbitrariness and injustice of the boundaries of territory, especially with existing and tolerated practices of undocumented migration. In trying to “Define American” Vargas implicitly puts his finger on the wound of the general legitimating problem of the nation-state in a globally interconnected world of politics, economy and culture. This is of course a very radical reading of Vargas’s claims, but to say it with his words: “Let’s talk.”

I have been thinking about the ubiquity of paranoid politics, as I wonder whether the Israeli – Palestinian peace process has any chance for success, and as I read the news from Israel concerning a bill that would require non -Jewish immigrants to take an oath of allegiance to “Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

If we aren’t paying close attention, this amendment may seem to be no big deal.  After all, hasn’t Israel all along been the Jewish homeland and a democratic state?  But a loyalty oath that commits to the official formulation of Israel as a Jewish state is clearly directed at the rights and citizenship status of Israeli citizens of Palestinian origins.  Although they are twenty per cent of the population, they are being asked to demonstrate their loyalty, publicly confirming their second class status facing this symbolic act and a variety of other oaths of allegiance.

There is a sense that they are being assumed to be guilty until proven innocent, and they have to demonstrate their innocence repeatedly.  Many Israelis and friends of Israel, elected officials, including those inside the ruling coalition, are deeply worried.

The same politicians who came up with this oath have additional proposals,  as Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz, puts it “a loyalty law for Knesset members; a loyalty law for film production; a loyalty law for non-profits; putting the Palestinian catastrophe, the Nakba, beyond the scope of the law; a ban on calls for a boycott; and a bill for the revocation of citizenship.”

Some might suggest that Levy is a left wing critic who exaggerates.  But Eli Yishai, the Interior Minister, has apparently been working to show that Levy’s worst fears are a reality, bringing paranoid politics to its logical extension, proposing to strip Israelis of citizenship for disloyalty.  “’Declarations are not enough in fact against incidents such as [MKs] Azmi Bishara and Hanin Zoabi,’ Yishai said in reference to two Israeli Arab lawmakers, one who is suspected of having contacts with enemy states and the other who took part in a Gaza-bound aid flotilla. “Anyone who betrays the state will lose his citizenship.”  (link)

Yishai defines his opponents as enemies, including legitimately elected members of the the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and the prospects for the continuation of democracy dims.

Levy identifies the looming threat: “Remember this day. It’s the day Israel changes its character. As a result, it can also change its name to the Jewish Republic of Israel, like the Islamic Republic of Iran…From now on, we will be living in a new, officially approved, ethnocratic, theocratic, nationalistic and racist country… ”

Even paranoids have enemies.  Israel, to be sure, is threatened by its neighbors and there is ambiguity and ambivalence in the attitudes of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.  But the paranoid style of politics leads threatening problems to define political identity, and makes it next to impossible to deal with complex political challenges, insisting on resolute clarity and steadfastness, where openness to ambiguity and flexibility are the only ways to a democratic and just outcome.

The breakdown of the talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis over settlements is an immediate looming crisis for the Obama administration.  It is soberly explained in the American press that Prime Minister Netanyahu cannot be as flexible as the American administration would like because if he is, his coalition will collapse.  But it is that coalition, which includes political extremists, some call them Fascists, that is probably the largest obstacle for peace.  Think of the people carrying the craziest signs at Tea Party Demonstrations and at the town hall meetings last summer, imagine them included in a governing coalition, with their leader (Avigdor Liberman) as the Foreign Minister.  This is the most significant threat to the peace talks, indeed the threat to Israeli and Palestinian democracy and dignity.