Democratic postmortems on Barack Obama’s disappointing first year in the Oval Office have emphasized, as the president himself did, difficulties inherited from “the last eight years.” Republicans, for their part, credit public opposition to Obama’s overreaching policies. But a full explanation goes much deeper. Obama is failing because he has turned the constitutional functions of the presidency upside down.
Last week, a little more than 24 hours after the FBI warned senators not to disclose the sensitive information that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was cooperating with the FBI, the White House shared the information with the news media.
Attorney General Eric Holder has been the Obama administration’s point man in revising the nation’s approach to terrorism. Holder said last summer that it was his decision to reinvestigate CIA operatives who had employed enhanced interrogation techniques during the Bush administration, although these individuals had been cleared by the Justice Department’s career prosecutors.
You know how at Super Bowl parties you often have to endure the painful commentary of non-football fans who feel the need to pontificate about various aspects of the game? Well, at least those fans aren’t usually U.S. senators, and they aren’t usually intent on making their peculiar views the basis of a Justice Department investigation.
As the mid-Atlantic stocks up on supplies to prepare for the coming storm, let's stock up on Quotes of the Day (So Far!). The first is from James M. Buchanan:
Unfortunately, economists, generally, failed to understand that aggregate variables that may be measured with tolerable accuracy ex post may not be variables subject to control, directly or even indirectly. The fundamental misconception here lies in the understanding of what ‘the economy’ is. The ‘economic problem’ is not (despite Lionel Robbins) an engineering problem that may be defined simply as the allocation of scarce resources among alternative uses. The economy, in some inclusive definitional sense, is perhaps best described as an order that consists of an interlinked set of exchanges, simple and complex, from which outcomes emerge that may in some respects be meaningfully measured but that cannot be chosen, and thereby controlled, by concentrated decision takers.
The difference between the Left and the Right is not a difference of degree, but of direction, and each side tends to think that moving even a little in the wrong direction is worse than doing nothing. That’s why a compromise won’t be so easy.
The larger public, I think, is not so tied to either direction, but is opposed to doing anything huge. That’s a big part of what the Democrats have done wrong this year: They have proposed too much. Whichever side is smart enough to propose some modest and sensible incremental steps in its preferred direction will have far better luck with the public. Conservatives would be wise to do so in a serious and concerted way before liberals realize that it’s time to employ some different means toward their same misguided end.
"Modest and sensible incremental steps" like those found in the small bill, for example.
Last week, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dennis Blair presented the “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community” to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. While the report notes that Venezuela is “struggling” to deal with the post-2008 drop in oil prices and with production declines, it also outlines a variety of ways in which Hugo Chávez remains a very real threat to U.S. interests in Latin America and beyond.
Start with Iran. The mullahs have identified oil-rich Venezuela as a potential shield against the impact of international energy sanctions. Even if the U.S. and other Western powers further restricted Iran’s access to gasoline, Venezuela (and China) could help soften the blow. As U.S. policymakers evaluate the effectiveness of gasoline sanctions, they must remember that Tehran and Caracas have formed an increasingly close alliance. This past June, after Iran’s stolen election, while government thugs were murdering student demonstrators in the streets, Chávez congratulated Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his “very big and important victory.”
The Venezuelan leader has also upgraded ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. “Over the past five years,” says the DNI report, “Venezuela has purchased more than $6 billion in weapons from Moscow, including 24 SU30MK multi-role fighters, along with helicopters, tanks, armored personnel carriers, air defenses missiles, and small arms.” The magnitude of Venezuela’s military buildup has raised serious worries elsewhere in South America, and it “risks fueling a regional arms race.” Neighboring Colombia is especially alarmed, given Chávez’s bellicose statements about the possibility of war and his support for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). According to the DNI report, Venezuela is still covertly aiding the FARC terrorists, despite a series of embarrassing revelations over the past two years.
While Chávez has been weakened by Venezuela’s mounting domestic woes, and while his “regional influence may have peaked,” he remains a menace to democracies throughout the hemisphere. Indeed, the radical governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua—which are all part of Chávez’s Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA)—“are likely to oppose nearly every U.S. policy initiative in the region, including the expansion of free trade, counter drug and counterterrorism cooperation, military training, and security initiatives, and even U.S. assistance programs.”
Thirty-three percent of Alabama Republicans polled support the former Arkansas governor for the 2012 presidential nomination, while 23 percent said they would back Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee. The next closest Republican to Huckabee and Palin is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who takes 12 percent of the vote.
Mandatory pundit disclaimer: All early polls are worthless because they reflect political conditions that will be fossil fuel by the time voting begins in Iowa in January 2012. Nevertheless, the Alabama poll is in line with otherpolling and the money race: The three top contenders for the nomination, at this moment, are Huckabee, Palin, and Romney.
Of these three, at this moment, Huckabee is the most broadly popular figure -- he has the best spread between his approval and disapproval ratings, for example, and one of our perspicacious readers notes that Huckabee's lead among the "not so conservative" voters in the Alabama poll is actually six points higher than his lead among "conservative" voters. You don't need to be a winger to like Huckabee, in other words.
Of these three, Palin is the most polarizing, the most fascinating, and the most dynamic political personality. Many grassroots activists feel strongly about her; just as many outside the conservative movement and Republican party do not. Her support is tied to her personality and her story, not necessarily to her political program and certainly not to the notes on her palm. Palin's sheer political talent is like an unstable chemical compound -- you just don't know what may happen next. That makes her thrilling to watch, but Republican primary voters may decide that they'd rather have Palin as their champion and not their president.
Of these three, however, only Romney is acceptable to the coastal GOP bigwigs. (Tim Pawlenty is the establishment's second choice.) A primary that pits the powers-that-be against social conservatives and Tea Party nation will be nasty (but fun!).
Russia's top general said on Tuesday that U.S. missile defense plans were directed against his country, and differences over the issue were holding up an arms treaty with Washington, Russian news agencies reported.
The renewed blast from Moscow raised questions about the chances of an early agreement on a successor to a Cold War-era nuclear arms reduction treaty that expired in December.
Obama asked for this. By unilaterally cutting missile defense ahead of START follow-on negotiations, he demonstrated to Moscow that he'd degrade U.S. national security and snub allies in order to pass treaties. Now Russia smells blood, and it is threatening Obama's prized nuclear-reduction treaty in order to squeeze (us) for more defense cuts.
There is yet another key distinction between President Reagan’s approach to arms control and Obama’s. Reagan was clearly willing to walk away from an arms control deal at the summit with Soviet Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland in the face of Soviet demands to scrap SDI. He was right to do so. He still achieved the 1987 intermediate-range nuclear force (INF) agreement he was seeking and put in place arrangements for the eventual conclusion of the START treaty and the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. Ronald Reagan’s vision compelled him to walk away from the talks at Reykjavik on the grounds that Moscow’s proposals would make the U.S. more vulnerable. Likewise, the U.S. Senate must ensure that the new treaty is also consistent with Reagan’s principles or refuse to ratify it.
A memo being passed around by Capitol Hill Republicans:
Responding to continued criticism over the Administration’s mishandling of the Christmas Day bomber, John Brennan took to the USA Today to state that “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.” This sentence is just too rich for an Administration and its surrogates who:
· made the same charge against the previous Administration in 2003, “If any Member of this Senate--Democrat or Republican--takes to the floor, questions this White House policy, raises any questions about the gathering of intelligence information, or the use of it, be prepared for the worst. This White House is going to turn on you and attack you. They are going to question your patriotism.” – Senator Durbin, 149 Cong. Rec. S9668, July 22, 2003.
· said the previous Administration choose not to explain its national security policies by instead “attacking the patriotism of those who question them.” – Senator Kennedy, Sept. 22, 2003.
· took to the House floor to say “patriotism is exhibited by my dissent.” – Rep. Jackson-Lee, 152 Cong. Rec. H4124, June 15, 2006.
· called those who criticized President Bush’s policies in Iraq “real patriots.” – Keith Olbermann, July 19, 2007.
· called a sitting President of the United States a traitor, saying “Traitors don’t get to question my patriotism.” – Bill Maher, March 25, 2007.
On December 18, 2007, Majority Leader Reid said on the floor, 153 Cong. Rec. S15852, “Before Democrats controlled the Congress, the Bush White house conducted the war with total impunity. No dissent was tolerated. The patriotism of those who raised questions was openly attacked.” It is unclear whether the Majority Leader will remind the President’s homeland security advisor of this criticism.
The opinion piece also presents a critical error, asserting that “There is little difference between military and civilian custody, other than an interrogator with a uniform. The suspect gets access to a lawyer.” An enemy combatant’s right to an attorney is far from clear. To be sure, an enemy combatant has a right to counsel if he were charged in a military commission, but it is wholly unresolved what right to counsel, if any, an enemy combatant has beyond what this Administration would choose as a matter of policy to bestow upon the detainee, and when that right would attach, if it exists at all.
Honest question: We've heard much about how the Bush administration supposedly questioned the patriotism of Democrats, but what are the specific examples? Anything on par with Brennan's accusation that critics are serving "the goals of al Qaeda"? I honestly can't recall an example of a Bush national security official questioning the patriotism of Democrats, but if someone can prove otherwise, I'd be happy to set the record straight.
Sure it's a little-known holiday, but it is as intensely celebrated in Matt Labash's office as National Quilting Day or Wear Too Much Axe Body Spray Day. And, by Matt Labash's office, I mean the inexorably Phoenix-scented, desk-shaped pile of scrap printer paper and Gary Hart memorabilia under which he burrows to write for The Weekly Standard, not the whole Weekly Standard office. Because we all know Bill Kristol wears the exact right amount of Axe Body Spray, and we dare anyone to say otherwise.
But today is a more legitimate holiday than the one Matt scribbles onto our office calendars once a week (You owe me a Gary Larson 2010 desk calendar, Labash). Because today is the day that Matt's book, "Fly Fishing With Darth Vader" is officially on the market! (Perhaps a perfect consolation for anyone saddened by the fact that Carrie Prejean is off the market? Synergy.)
In the spirit of the day, our very own Matt Labash has written a special edition of Ask Matt Labash for... The Daily Caller. At any rate, it's a quick overview of Labash's p.r. blitz—a journey into the glitzy world of 3-question Politico profiles & Esquire interviews into which he rarely ever ventures. "I feel like Frodo on a trip to South Beach!" he exclaimed, in an e-mail that I made up just now.
As always, I recommend reading Matt. Luddism aside, he's as fun online as he is in real, paper print (or, whatever it is they call it these days).
But he is perhaps most fun in book form, where nothing is ever shortened to 140 characters. That's the way he likes it, especially when we let him write wearing his "Monkey Business" t-shirt.
On Christmas Day 2009, the Chinese regime sentenced writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for "incitement to subvert state power." His crime was co-authoring and circulating on-line a manifesto for democratic change in China called Charter 08, an intentional homage to the Czech dissident movement's Charter 77. Charter 08 got Mr. Liu into trouble because it challenged the legitimacy of one-party rule by the Chinese Communist Party.
Mr. Liu's trial was the usual Kafkaesque totalitarian exercise: brief, closed, and one-sided, with a pre-determined outcome cleared at the highest level of the Chinese regime. The official U.S. response to this outrageous detention was a mild December 24 statement from the Acting Press Spokesman at the State Department. There has been nothing further from either Secretary Clinton or President Obama, despite Liu being among the most prominent dissidents in China and having received one of the harshest sentences in recent memory for a non-violent political crime.
Liu prepared a statement that he intended to read as part of his defense, as was his right under Chinese law, but he was denied the opportunity by the kangaroo court -- which also barred his wife and diplomatic observers from the courtroom. His statement has now been made public outside China, and has been elegantly translated into English by David Kelly, a China scholar at the University of Technology, Sydney (Australia). The entire statement is a must-read, simultaneously evocative of the gospel of Christ, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the poetry of Yeats. It is imbued with the hopeful patriotism of a dissident and the complex humanity of a man who has willingly taken on the risks of challenging an unyielding authoritarian state. His love for his country and for his wife are incredibly moving, but by far the most remarkable aspect of this text is his equanimity after two decades of persecution by the Chinese state. He thanks his jailers and even compliments them on improving their facilities since his prior incarceration. He expresses respect for the individuals involved in his prosecutions, but is relentless in his critique of the system that they operate within. It is an incredible combination of defiance and forgiveness:
Michelle Obama recently kicked up a mild fuss by discussing her children while talking about childhood obesity. Per ABC News, Obama said at an event kicking off her childhood obesity awareness campaign: "I didn't see the changes. And that's also part of the problem, or part of the challenge. It's often hard to see changes in your own kids when you're living with them day in and day out ... But we often simply don't realize that those kids are our kids, and our kids could be in danger of becoming obese."
The first lady was espousing what should be a relatively uncontroversial position, that parents needs to pay attention to their children and ensure that their health is maintained. Part of maintaining health is ensuring that children eat right and remain active in order to stave off obesity. As studies have shown, childhood obesity can lead to any number of adult diseases: heart disease, diabetes, and other serious problems can arise if you let your kids sit around the television/computer screen and chow down on Oreos.
This is not to say that the government should be involved with regulating what children are allowed to eat, of course. As Nick Gillespie says in this video while going toe to toe with a food cop hellbent on regulating kiddie calorie counts, "Kids have parents." The first lady is simply doing what any good parent would do and using her example to show the importance of maintaining at least a little vigilance on the health of your children.
Needless to say, this didn't go over well with the fat-acceptance crowd. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance released a statement saying that "When important figures such as parents, teachers and peers in children's social environment endorse a preference for thinness and place an importance on weight control, this can contribute to body dissatisfaction, dieting, low self-esteem and weight bias among children and adolescents."
These complaints are ridiculous: Parents would be considered negligent if they weren't concerned with their children's basic well-being, and -- regardless of what the pro-obesity folks may think -- carrying around a ton of extra weight as a child simply isn't healthy. It's best to nip this problem in the bud when children are as young as possible so they don't grow into obese adults.
Iran's Supreme Leader raised some eyebrows yesterday, claiming that Tehran would deliver a "punch" that would leave Western powers "stunned."
Unlikely. Here's why:
These statements are generally for internal consumption. That's particularly true in this instance, as Iran is expecting a massive flood of protestors to inundate official government anniversary ceremonies. Khamenei's speech was simply a rehashing of old propaganda with a slightly more bombastic spin, giving Western media outlets something else to talk about besides Iran's coming civil unrest.
Still, that doesn't mean the Mullahs will keep their fangs tucked on Thursday. Iran tends to use external provocation to mask internal distress. I think worst case scenario is that they punch another satellite into orbit, prompting the usual discussions about potential ICBM capabilities. Large scale military air, land, and sea exercises are also fairly steady headline grabbers, so we'll see the usual feathers puffed in the Persian Gulf. And it's generally a safe bet to count on Iran's proxies to stir the pot during internal unrest -- Hezbollah and Hamas might want to fire off a few salvos at Israel, at least before the IDF can get their Iron Dome batteries networked and online.
All this, coupled with their announcement of further uranium enrichment, seems to be part of a grand public relations campaign spanning Iran's 10 Days of Dawn festivities. It's wholly targeted at their internal populace, which makes the Tehran government more nervous than the U.S. or Israel.
In a White House briefing where the president showed up (because Howard Kurtz wrote a column) to talk about his bipartisan health-care summit and getting beyond politics to solve problems, the White House press secretary used the dumbest political story of the week to take a shot at a former governor and Fox News Contributor from the podium.
Earlier this week, the Left was up in arms over Sarah Palin's hands. She had written notes to herself on her palm for her Tea Party Convention speech and Q&A. Why this is a problem for the supporters of the TelePrompter in Chief is beyond me, but that fact that it's the only problem they had with her speech illustrates how good the speech was.
Gibbs went petty today, as he so often does, by scribbling notes on his palm today, featuring "eggs, milk, bread, hope and change."
Palin wrote "Hi, Mom" on her hand before a Sunday rally for Rick Perry in the wake of the uproar over her hand notes the day before. It was one of those moments that, for any person not caught up in Palin Derangement Syndrome, should have made crystal clear why people love her. For all his strengths, Barack Obama is capable of nothing like that sort of folksy self-deprecation.
Gibbs' joke kind of loses its punch when its subject has already made it. Plus, now the Left is forced to write about how totally lame Palin's joke was while simultaneously praising Gibbs' truly lame copy of it. That's gonna be some tough blog-writing, but I believe in them.
Update: And, Gibbs was actually the third person to make the joke, after Keith Olbermann's cringe-inducing segment. I'm not asking for a cease-fire on Sarah Palin (although I think there's a strong argument to make that making fun of her is not in the White House's best interest right now), but a little less laziness would be appreciated.
Update:Hey, good one, Andrea Mitchell! That makes Gibbs fourth with that joke on national television, if you're still keeping track.
As if there isn't enough for the French to worry about these days: climate change, the global financial crisis, the World Cup, farm subsidies, Cannes, terrorism. But now they are facing a threat to that which is most sacred—their language. According to the Financial Times, "Senior French officials are mounting a rearguard action to defend the use of French at the UN and other international institutions as a language of diplomacy, in the face of the inexorable rise of English." It seems the reaction was "partly prompted by the appointment of Britain’s Lady Ashton to head the European Union’s foreign policy in November."
Luckily, President Nicolas Sarkozy has deployed former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to New York as a special envoy to promote French, bolstering the efforts of France's ambassador to the United Nations, Gérard Araud, who, reports FT, "declined to outline the programme for his country’s presidency of the UN Security Council in English, even as aides scurried to set up translation facilities. 'I don’t speak English. Point [full stop]!' Mr Araud told the UN’s mostly English-speaking press corps."
Perhaps they could all strike a compromise and speak ... German?
It was not too long ago that Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer took to the USA Today op-ed page to accuse Obamacare opponents of being "un-American," and today President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser John Brennan lashes out on that same page at critics of the White House: "too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points, instead of coming together to keep us safe."
"Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda," Brennan concludes.
Who are those in Washington "misrepresenting the facts" and serving "the goals of al Qaeda"? Brennan doesn't say. He does attack those who think that Abdulmutallab shouldn't have been Mirandized. Does that mean Sen. Evan Bayh, former CIA director Michael Hayden, and Time columnist Joe Klein are guilty of sedition, or do non-Republicans get a pass? If Brennan wants to accuse Americans of aiding the enemy, he should name names.
Brennan also writes that calls to try terrorists only in military tribinals "lack foundation"--to make his point he cites the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in federal court. But there are very real concerns--the trial of Moussaoui is a perfect example--about giving enemy combatants civilian trials.
According to the Washington Post, Brennan's "nonpartisan credentials give his words weight at a time when Republicans are seeking to use the Abdulmutallab case as evidence that Obama and the Democrats are soft on national security." But isn't it more likely that Brennan's accusation that critics are serving "the goals of al Qaeda" has tarnished his reputation beyond repair? Who in the White House thought it was a good idea to have Brennan publish a nasty, hackish, partisan attack on the loyalty of White House critics in USA Today? Can you imagine the blowback if someone in the Bush administration, like Stephen Hadley, had accused Bush's critics of serving "the goals of al Qaeda"?
Republicans want to expand the use of health savings accounts, to cover routine expenses for people who enroll in high-deductible health plans. Democrats denounce such accounts as a tax shelter for higher-income people.
Many Republicans want to expand the role of private insurance companies in Medicare. Insurers already manage Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, and Republicans see that as a model.
Republicans agree on the need to slow the explosive growth of Medicare, but say the savings should be used to shore up Medicare, not to help finance a new entitlement program.
The Times reporters also note that many conservatives and Republicans, such as Paul Ryan and Tom Coburn, support ending the unfair tax treatment of individuals who purchase their own health insurance on the individual marketplace. The reporters also briefly mention medical malpractice reform. But they leave out the GOP call to make it easier for folks to buy insurance across state lines.
What struck me about the article was that the most effective criticisms of the Republican ideas came from the reporters themselves. Each GOP idea had a caveat appended to it giving the liberal point of view. Nothing wrong with that--it's fair and balanced! But then the reporters quote actual Democratic legislators, whose counter-arguments are limited to this:
The proposals are “as skimpy as a hospital gown,” said Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas.
Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, said, “If the Republicans’ health care plan was a plan for a fire department, they would rush into a burning building, and they would rush out and leave everybody behind.”
At least Doggett's line is funny; I don't even know what Miller is talking about. The bottom line is the elected officials quoted in the piece give no indication of wanting to incorporate conservative principles into the final health bill. Nor, for that matter, does the White House.
Why? Part of it is partisanship. But the other part is that liberals and conservatives simply have different goals for health reform. The liberal dream is for a national plan that insures every American and uses government power to control costs, dictate mandatory benefits, and determine the "comparative effectiveness" of various treatments. Liberals think the health care system is in crisis and needs to be significantly overhauled.
Conservatives do not. (Nor do the vast majority of Americans who have insurance and are pleased with it, even if they also think it costs too much.) Rather, conservatives want to open the health care sector to market dynamics that stand a good chance of lowering costs while making individual insurance easier to buy. Universality is not a top priority; if anything, many conservatives and libertarians care passionately about preserving the right of the individual not to be insured.
With such wildly divergent perspectives, bipartisan compromise is a dream. But that is no reason to miss an opportunity to engage in a civil debate.
The President is adamant that we seize this historic moment to pass meaningful health insurance reform legislation. He began this process by inviting Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House on March 5 of last year, and he’s continued to work with both parties in crafting the best possible bill. He’s been very clear about his support for the House and Senate bills because of what they achieve for the American people: putting a stop to insurance company abuses, extending coverage to millions of hardworking Americans, getting control of rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reducing the deficit.
The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He’s open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny. What he will not do, however, is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small business counting on it. The recent news that a major insurer plans to raise premiums for some customers by as much as 39 percent is a stark reminder of the consequences of doing nothing.
This lends credence to the idea on the Right (Matt Continetti noted it), that Obama's bipartisan conference will be pure theater— "Here's the same plan we've been pitching for a year that almost everyone hates! If you say you still don't like it, you're what's wrong with Washington."
I tend to think Republicans should attend the bipartisan conference because refusing to do so makes them look far more like obstructionists than voting against a bill everyone hates ever has. People like these forums, and Republicans not participating gives Obama a bigger win than he could earn if they showed up.
Is Obama good in this setting? Sure. And, he was widely given credit for having "won" the day the last time he met with the GOP conference to talk incessantly and ironically about how politics shouldn't be about "winning" the day.
When Republicans take President Obama up on his invitation to hash out their differences over health care this month, they will carry with them a fairly well-developed set of ideas intended to make health insurance more widely available and affordable, by emphasizing tax incentives and state innovations, with no new federal mandates and only a modest expansion of the federal safety net.
Read the whole thing. A perusal of the reporter's health-care writing archives reveals the last story he wrote focused on the GOP was headlined, "Hopes dim, GOP still vows to fight health-care bill." Today's "On health care, GOP road is a new map" is certainly a better story for Republican p.r. More importantly, it's a better story for market alternatives offered by the GOP, which are in line with the more modest approach Americans want:
Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said he and his colleagues were skeptical of “grand legislative policy schemes” and favored “a step-by-step approach” focused on lowering health costs for families and businesses.
“It is arrogant to imagine that 100 senators are wise enough to reform comprehensively a health care system that constitutes 17 percent of the world’s largest economy and affects 300 million Americans of disparate backgrounds and circumstances,” Mr. Alexander said.
Arnold Kling has some very specific conditions the GOP should demand be met before Obama's alleged negotiating session:
1. All Medicare savings must be used to shore up Medicare. None of those savings can be used to fund new insurance subsidies or entitlements. Medicare is unsustainable, and it is going to need every dollar that we can save, and more. There is nothing to spare for a new entitlement.
2. Medical savings accounts must not be killed.
3. Catastrophic health insurance must not be killed or heavily disadvantaged relative to comprehensive insurance.
4. All new subsidies that enable people to purchase health insurance must be on budget, rather than through insurance company regulations that are likely to result in cost-shifting.
5. The bill must provide for at least one of the following:
a. Interstate competition in health insurance.
b. greatly reduce (preferably eliminate) the tax inequity between obtaining health insurance on your own and getting it through your employer.
I think it's fairly obvious Democrats in leadership won't agree to most of these things. There is a significant ideological split on how to deal with health care's very real problems. But GOP solutions fit the national mood far better than Democratic ones. This one televised appearance by the president is not likely to turn the tide for Obamacare, but it could once again give the GOP a chance to pitch solid, incremental, market-oriented reforms in front of a national audience.
As the president says, the problem with health-care spending will have to be dealt with. The Democrats' current plan fails to deal with it, but there is hope that some of the GOP alternatives could. (It helps that Republicans are less ideologically inclined to fix spending problems with more spending.) Liberals were quite right in noting, when the health-care debate started, that the GOP hadn't spent a lot of time or focus on health care before Obamcare, thus lessening their credibility on the issue.
Why not use the president's forum to forge more of the necessary credibility to deal with it when the time comes—either in the event that Democrats acquiesce to more GOP ideas in a last-ditch effort to pass a bill, or when the thing is scrapped entirely? It worked last time. Now, even the NYT says the GOP has a "well-developed set of ideas." And, who am I to argue with the New York Times?
Update: The Politico elaborates on the theatrics involved, here, but I still say it's worth pitching conservative ideas as the Democrats' plan continues to unravel:
Obama hopes to walk into the Feb. 25 summit with an agreement in hand between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on a final Democratic bill, so they can move ahead with a reform package after the sit-down.
House Republican leaders delivered a letter to the White House Monday that included a list of pointed questions that they would like answered before the meeting at Blair House, such as whether Obama would give up on using reconciliation, a way to pass health reform in the Senate with just 51 votes.
“If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate,” the letter read.
So what’s the point? A jaded Washington wondered how a single meeting — in front of live TV cameras, no less — could change the fundamentals of the debate.
Two recent polls show former U.S. Representative Tom Campbell, who recently entered the California Republican primary for a U.S. Senate nomination, with a lead over his Republican opponents Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore. While the resume on his website shows a very impressive candidate, Campbell has a long troubling record as an anti-Israel public official. Here are some examples from the record that Campbell built up over a decade in the House (Jennifer Rubin helps chronicle it here):
In 1999, Rep. Tom Campbell introduced an amendment to cut foreign aid to Israel. This amendment, titled the “Campbell Amendment,” was defeated overwhelmingly on the House floor by a vote of 13-413.
In 1999, Campbell was one of just 24 House members to vote against a resolution expressing Congressional opposition to the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.
In 1997, Rep. Tom Campbell authored an amendment (again, titled the “Campbell Amendment”) to cut foreign aid to Israel. The resolution failed 9-32 in committee. This amendment was particularly offensive to the pro-Israel community because it came at the same time that Israel had agreed to a complete phase out of economic aid over a 8-year period. This was not sufficient for Campbell and his amendment called for an additional cut beyond what had been agreed to.
In 1990, Campbell was one of just 34 House members to vote against a resolution expressing support for Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The resolution passed the House 378-34.
Many political observers are coming to see that the ex-state senator from the South Side is running his federal administration in Washington much the way they run things back home: with a small....
...claque of clout-laden people from the same school who learned their political trade back in the nation's No. 3 city, named for an Indian word for a smelly wild onion.
That style is tough, focused, immune to any distractions but cosmetic niceties. And did we mention tough. A portly, veteran Chicago alderman once confided only about 40% jokingly, that he had taken up jogging to lose weight but quickly gave it up as boring because "you can't knock anyone down." That's politics the Chicago way.
Obama and his top advisers Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod all hail from the Chicago school. Press secretary Robert Gibbs is an Alabaman who worked for North Carolinian Democrats, but he's adapted to the Chicago method with ease. Together, this band of operatives has not deviated from the themes and goals of Obama's 2008 campaign. They do not admit errors of substance. Faced with a troublesome midterm election, Obama did not search out new figures and guides for his party. He reached back to his 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe.
Of course, you can't argue with success -- oops! Obama's problem is that his biggest success was getting elected. That happened more than a year ago. What has the Chicago School accomplished while in office?
(1) A stimulus package written by Nancy Pelosi and David Obey that damaged administration credibility and has not led to renewed investment and recovery in the private sector.
(2) A cap-and-trade bill written by Henry Waxman that has no chance of becoming law.
(3) A health care bill the public disapproves of and that has little chance of becoming law -- because Democrats cannot find the votes to reconcile the House and Senate versions.
(4) A renewed focus on job creation that lasted all of a week.
(5) A fiscal year 2011 budget that Democrats on the Hill do not want to be associated with.
(6) A morass of statements and counter-statements concerning (a) the decision to try (or not to try) 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City and (b) how, when, and by whose decision the Christmas Day bomber was Mirandized.
That's quite a list. And yet if you read David Brooks's column, you get the impression the president thinks everything is hunky-dory.
The atmosphere in the White House appears surprisingly tranquil. Emanuel is serving as a lighting rod for the president but remains crisply confident in his role as chief of staff. It’s true that several top administration officials did not want to attempt comprehensive health care reform this year. But they are not opening recrimination campaigns. It’s no secret that many think the president needs to be more assertive with Congress, yet administration officials still talk about Obama in awestruck tones, even in private.
Some would say the administration is underreacting to the incredible shift in the public mood. Some would say they need more voices from the great unwashed. But no one could accuse them of panicking, or of scrambling about incoherently. In their first winter of discontent, they are offering continuity and comity. Whatever their relations with the country might be, inside they seem unruffled. The bonds of association, from the top down, seem healthy — especially for a bunch of Democrats.
Many of us expected the White House to pivot to the center after Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts. In hindsight, that expectation seems laughable. And the reason a pivot now seems fantastic is Obama. His estimation of his powers of persuasion is so high, he truly believes he will be able to best the Republicans, sway public opinion, and force a final vote on health care -- and all through more talk!
Who will tell him he's making a mistake? Not his functionaries at the White House. Brooks says "administration officials still talk about Obama in awestruck tones, even in private."
Note to White House staffers who are willing to express contrary opinions: you may want to read John B. Judis. He may not be a "nihilist," but he gets it nonetheless:
The last two Democratic presidents faced similar problems. After the Democrats were rebuked in the 1978 midterms, Jimmy Carter took exactly the wrong course. He replaced mediocre people with even more mediocre people. He allowed intramural squabbles to surface. He lost his focus and ended up blaming the American people for his political problems. Clinton, who had governed his first year as a Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law graduate, rediscovered after November 1994 that he had been a successful governor of Arkansas. He governed for the next six years as the president of Middle America, in spite of a furious attempt by Republicans to impeach him.
"Obama doesn’t seem, like Clinton or Reagan, to be a man of many faces," Judis concludes. No, he does not. And his inability to adapt to changing political circumstances is going to leave him and his party in a lurch. Like Washington, the White House is snowed in. Only a major shock to the system -- something on par with the 1994 or 2006 elections -- will force it to break out the shovels, clear a path, and reconnect with the public. And by that point, it may be too late.
The fanciful idea of nuclear abolition: "Would-be nuclear powers like Iran do not need the pretext of American or French or Russian or Chinese nuclear capability to acquire their own weapons; they want them regardless for the power and influence they bring. Arguing that nuclear abolition makes attempts to stop proliferation more credible—as President Obama has done repeatedly in speeches from Prague to the United Nations—simply plays into the morally specious arguments of international bad actors."
While everyone seems to be all atwitter (quite literally) about Sarah Palin's hinting that she will run in 2012 "if I believe that that is the right thing to do for our country," it is worth noting the only actual name she mentioned in her Fox News Sunday interview last Sunday—Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. As she told Chris Wallace,
But listen, no, we have some strong, some young turks in this party. Paul Ryan, I'm very impressed with Paul Ryan.... He's good. Man, he is sharp, he is smart, articulate and he is passionate about these common-sense solutions that America has got to adopt to get us on the right road. I can name a whole lot of people.
Not that she does. But as Ryan (who recently turned 40) told our own Matt Continetti in this week's issue, he has no intention of running. At least not at the time this item was posted.
Last week was a big one for nuclear news. First, the Obama administration submitted its proposed budget for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (that’s the agency that, among other things, maintains our warheads). Second, an unnamed administration official announced an “agreement in principle” with the Russians for the START follow-on treaty.
These two things are connected beyond the obvious point of contact. The former is meant to be a down payment on the latter. The administration has been put on notice that it faces substantial opposition in the Senate, not only to the ratification of this new treaty (whatever it ends up being called), but to its other arms control priorities as well. The price, say a coalition of 41 mostly (but not entirely) Republican senators, is a serious commitment to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The administration is therefore loudly trumpeting its request for 13.4 percent increase in funding for the NNSA. Included in that is a $600 million (or nearly 10 percent) bump for the so-called “Weapons Activities” category, a catch-all that includes the all-important “stockpile support” line. Why is that so important? Because what those senators want is “funding for a modern warhead,” which—if there were any—would be in that budget line.
Is it? Aye, there’s the rub. Not that I can see. It’s true, the administration is spending more money. But not on a new warhead design or on any upgrade of an existing design. Rather, the money is going toward a number of other efforts. There is, for instance, more “Life Extension” of the W76, an older-generation SLBM warhead that 20 years ago was slated to be replaced by the more advanced W88—production of which was subsequently cancelled in 1992. There is also money for similar life extension for the B61, a bomb whose design goes back to the 1960s (though some variants are much more recent). There’s funding for a “study” of the W78, one of the two types warheads on our 450 remaining Minuteman III ICBMs. The rest is dedicated to modernizing and maintaining key capabilities that would allow us to make more substantive upgrades to the arsenal later.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn’t claim to have developed an economic stimulus plan of his own. But he does favor a cluster of proposals that, when packaged together, are a simple, sensible program for rejuvenating the economy.
I take the liberty of dubbing it the McConnell Plan (without asking the Republican leader’s approval). If enacted, the plan would do a great deal more to boost the economy and increase employment than the “jobs bill” that President Obama and congressional Democrats are cooking up.
McConnell’s set of proposals would do several specific things. First and foremost, it would provide a measure of certainty to the business and investment community about the future. The aim: Produce economic conditions conducive to private investment, economic growth, and job creation.
And the plan would restrain the budget deficit and the national debt, without indulging in what is universally regarded as counterproductive during an economic downturn–raising taxes.
McConnell mentioned two steps to reduce uncertainty about the economic future when I interviewed him recently, and he’s repeated them publicly since then. One is to declare the effort to enact Democratic health care reform–ObamaCare–over. “That would be a great relief to American business looking at health care taxes,” he told CNN.
It’s not hard to imagine how this would ease the minds of the CEOs and owners of businesses and prompt them to invest in expansion and begin hiring. However, it would be up to Obama to put his health care legislation “on the shelf,” as McConnell is urging. Instead, the president wants Republicans to join him in tweaking ObamaCare and making it a bipartisan bill. That, in McConnell’s view, is a non-starter.
The other McConnell idea is an extension of the Bush tax cuts, but not Obama-style. The president wants to preserve the tax cuts for individuals earning less than $200,000 a year and couples making less than $250,000.
My point here is not to champion Republicans. It is not to champion democracy. My point is that the ones throwing the temper tantrum right now are the Progressives. They think that the 2008 election gave them the right to operate like China's autocracy, and they are lashing out hysterically at those they perceive as preventing them from doing so. On the one hand, the villains are a small minority in the Senate. Or maybe the villains are the incoherent majority of the people.
The important point is that Progressives are never wrong. Top-down reform is the only way to fix the health care system. Anthropogenic global warming is scientifically proven, and its solution requires strenuous exercise of political control over individual behavior. Deficit spending is necessary and sufficient to create jobs. Technocrats can make banks too regulated to fail. Markets without technocratic control are like adolescents without adult supervision. Individual happiness can be improved by political authorities using scientific knowledge. Concentrated political power is the wave of the future, and it is good.
I am not a populist. I fear the mob. But how can I fear the Progressives any less?
Also read Gerard Alexander on liberal condescension. It occurs to me that American liberals are re-learning the lesson of the old left-wing chant: The people united can never be defeated. And it's driving them up a wall.
