History is Happening Now

For your viewing pleasure, here goes a great visualization of the credit crisis by the LA-based graphic designer Jonathan Jarvis:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, supporters of Republican candidate John McCain harped incessently on the idea that the “surge” strategy in Iraq had “worked.” This strategy, which was ordered by President Bush and implemented by General David H. Petraus, acquired such a glowing reputation that journalists began asking Obama why he refused to “acknowledge” that the surge had been a success.

To refresh our memories, here’s a tidbit from September 2008 from McCain’s cheif surrogate:

“We know the surge has worked,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., at the Republican National Convention this evening. “Our men and women in uniform know it has worked.  I promise you — above all others — Al Qaeda knows it has worked.  The only people who deny it are Barack Obama and his buddies at MoveOn.org. Why won’t they admit it? Because Barack Obama’s campaign is built around us losing in Iraq.”

The challenge facing Democrats — to convince the American people, in spite of significant decreases in Iraqi violence and American casualties, that the surge wasn’t actually working — became so difficult that eventually Democrats basically abandoned the argument altogether.

Regular readers of this blog know I am highly reluctant to criticize President Obama, so you’ll appreciate my admission that I cringed when I viewed the following exchange between candidate Obama and Bill O’Reilly:

MR. O’REILLY: I think you were desperately wrong on the surge. And I think you should admit it to the nation that now we have defeated the terrorists in Iraq. And the al Qaeda came there after we invaded, as you know. Okay, we’ve defeated them. If we didn’t, they would have used it as a staging ground. We’ve also inhibited Iran from controlling the southern part of Iraq by the surge which you did not support. So why won’t you say, I was right in the beginning, I was wrong about that?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, if you’ve listened to what I’ve said, and I’ll repeat it right here on this show, I think that there’s no doubt that the violence in down. I believe that that is a testimony to the troops that were sent and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated, by the way, including President Bush and the other supporters. It has gone very well, partly because of the Anbar situation and the Sunni –

MR. O’REILLY: The awakening, right.

SEN. OBAMA: — awakening, partly because the Shi’a –

MR. O’REILLY: But if it were up to you, there wouldn’t have been a surge.

SEN. OBAMA: Well, look –

MR. O’REILLY: No, no, no, no.

SEN. OBAMA: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

MR. O’REILLY: If it were up to you, there wouldn’t have been a surge.

SEN. OBAMA: No, no, no, no. Hold on.

MR. O’REILLY: You and Joe Biden — no surge.

SEN. OBAMA: No. Hold on a second, Bill. If you look at the debate that was taking place, we had gone through five years of mismanagement of this war that I thought was disastrous. And the president wanted to double-down and continue on open-ended policy that did not create the kinds of pressure in the Iraqis to take responsibility and reconcile –

MR. O’REILLY: It worked. Come on.

SEN. OBAMA: Bill, what I’ve said is — I’ve already said it succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.

MR. O’REILLY: Right! So why can’t you just say, I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge?

SEN. OBAMA: Because there is an underlying problem with what we’ve done. We have reduced the violence –

MR. O’REILLY: Yeah?

SEN. OBAMA: — but the Iraqis still haven’t taken a responsibility. And we still don’t have the kind of political reconciliation. We are still spending, Bill, 10 (billion dollars) to $12 billion a month.

Obama essentially stopped all national debate on the effectiveness of the surge when he let it slip out that the surge worked “beyond our wildest dreams.” From then on, it became a matter of national consensus that the surge had been a success, and it seemed to follow that the war was almost won. The point of the harping by O’Reilly and Graham (and others, of course) was to discredit Obama’s plan to withdraw from Iraq, but ironically, their argument was self-defeating: If the surge is a success and the war is nearly over, then what’s wrong with withdrawing as Obama suggests?

When President Bush agreed to a ”time horizon“ for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, that sealed it. The news sent a clear message to the American people: You need not concern yourselves anymore with the war, it’s under control, the surge worked, Obama’s plan to withdraw will be ok, so you can direct your attention to other, more pressing matters.

The sense that we’ve won in Iraq was only intensified by the results of the recent election, as described by one of the war’s top cheerleaders, Charles Krauthammer:

WASHINGTON — Preoccupied as it was poring through Tom Daschle’s tax returns, Washington hardly noticed a near-miracle abroad. Iraq held provincial elections. There was no Election Day violence. Security was handled by Iraqi forces with little U.S. involvement. A fabulous bazaar of 14,400 candidates representing 400 parties participated, yielding results highly favorable to both Iraq and the United States.

Iraq moved away from religious sectarianism toward more secular nationalism. “All the parties that had the words ‘Islamic’ or ‘Arab’ in their names lost,” noted Middle East expert Amir Taheri. “By contrast, all those that had the words ‘Iraq’ or ‘Iraqi’ gained.”

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went from leader of a small Islamic party to leader of the “State of the Law Party,” campaigning on security and secular nationalism. He won a smashing victory. His chief rival, a more sectarian and pro-Iranian Shiite religious party, was devastated. Another major Islamic party, the pro-Iranian Sadr faction, went from 11 percent of the vote to 3 percent, losing badly in its stronghold of Baghdad. The Islamic Fadhila party that had dominated Basra was almost wiped out.

The once-dominant Sunni party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the erstwhile insurgency was badly set back. New grass-roots tribal (“Awakening”) and secular Sunni leaders emerged.

Krauthammer sees the success of the elections as ultimately a validation of not only the surge, but the war itself. In the process, he made a clear reference to Thomas Ricks’ famous book about the war, “Fiasco.”

All this barely pierced the consciousness of official Washington. After all, it fundamentally contradicts the general establishment/media narrative of Iraq as “fiasco.”

One leading conservative thinker had concluded as early as 2004 that democracy in Iraq was “a childish fantasy.” Another sneered that the 2005 election that brought Maliki to power was “not an election but a census” — meaning people voted robotically according to their ethnicity and religious identity. The implication being that these primitives have no conception of democracy, and that trying to build one there is a fool’s errand.

What was lacking in all this condescension is what the critics so pride themselves in having — namely, context. What did they expect in the first elections after 30 years of totalitarian rule that destroyed civil society and systematically annihilated any independent or indigenous leadership? The only communal or social ties remaining after Saddam Hussein were those of ethnicity and sect.

But in the intervening years, while the critics washed their hands of Iraq, it began developing the sinews of civil society: a vibrant free press, a plethora of parties, the habits of negotiation and coalition-building. Reflecting these new realities, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani this time purposely and publicly backed no party, strongly signaling a return — contra Iran — to the Iraqi tradition of secular governance.

The big strategic winner here is the United States. The big loser is Iran. The parties Tehran backed are in retreat. The prime minister who staked his career on a strategic cooperation agreement with the United States emerged victorious. Moreover, this realignment from enemy state to emerging democratic ally, unlike Egypt’s flip from Soviet to U.S. ally in the 1970s, is not the work of a single autocrat (like Anwar Sadat), but a reflection of national opinion expressed in a democratic election.

It would be nice if Krauthammer were right. Nice for the country because we cannot afford to stay in Iraq, financially or politically. Nice for Republicans because they can point to our success in Iraq as the ultimate validation of President Bush. Nice for Democrats because they can keep their campaign promises to withdraw from Iraq without seeming to cause a humanitarian crisis when the country implodes into genocide upon our withdrawal.

Nice. Too nice to be true, if we listen to Ricks. Here is how Michiko Kakutani introduces Ricks in a review of Ricks’ latest book, “The Gamble” in the New York Times Book Review:

Thomas E. Ricks’s devastating 2006 book, “Fiasco,” provided a lucid, tough-minded assessment of the Iraq war, brilliantly summing up the political and military mistakes that had brought the United States, after more than three years of occupation, to a terrible tipping point there. Drawing upon the author’s reporting on the ground in Iraq and his many sources within the uniformed military, “Fiasco” chronicled how the United States “went to war in Iraq with scant solid international support and on the basis of incorrect information,” and how flawed assumptions, drastic planning failures and plain old-fashioned hubris led to a “derelict occupation” that fueled a burgeoning insurgency.

Ricks isn’t a Bush stooge, in other words. I’ve read Ricks’ book, and I believe it is THE book to read if you want to understand the Iraq War, at least up through 2005. My respect for Ricks makes the rest of the review quite troubling:

Mr. Ricks writes as both an analyst and a reporter with lots of real-time access to the chain of command, and his book’s narrative is animated by closely observed descriptions of how the surge worked on the ground, by a savvy knowledge of internal Pentagon politics, and by a keen understanding of the Iraq war’s long-term fallout on already strained American forces.

While Mr. Ricks praises General Petraeus’s success in helping the military regain the strategic initiative in Iraq as an “extraordinary achievement” — reducing violence and reviving “American prospects in the war” — he also reminds us that the surge was meant to “create a breathing space that would then enable Iraqi politicians to find a way forward,” and that that outcome is still unclear. “The best grade” the surge campaign can be given, he says, “is a solid incomplete.”

This book went to press before the recent elections in Iraq, which largely took place peacefully and which appear to have strengthened the country’s more secular and centrist parties, and Mr. Ricks warns that the United States goal of achieving “sustainable security” there (a far cry from former President George W. Bush’s goal of a stable, democratic, pro-West Iraq) may still prove elusive — or at the very least require a long-term American presence. Although Mr. Ricks writes that he is saddened by the war’s “obvious costs to Iraqis and Americans” and by “the incompetence and profligacy with which the Bush administration conducted much of it,” he adds that he has come to the conclusion that “we can’t leave.”

As Mr. Ricks sees it, the regional and global repercussions of failure in Iraq would be far more dire than those incurred by the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam — ranging, in this case, from a full-blown civil war to “a spreading war in the Middle East,” from a stronger Iran presiding over a Finlandized Iraq to the rise of a brutal new Iraq led by “younger, tougher versions” of Saddam Hussein, who “by the time of the invasion was an aging, almost toothless tiger.”

In other words, Ricks doesn’t believe the surge has worked. Not at all. Ricks’ recent editorial in The Washington Post includes dire warnings:

Many worried that as the United States withdraws and its influence wanes, the Iraqi tendency toward violent solutions will increase. In September 2008, John McCreary, a veteran analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, predicted that the arrangement imposed by the U.S. government on Iraqi factions should worry us for several reasons. First, it produces what looks like peace — but isn’t. Second, one of the factions in such situations will invariably seek to break out of the arrangement. “Power sharing is always a prelude to violence,” usually after the force imposing it withdraws, he maintained.

Many of those closest to the situation in Iraq expect a full-blown civil war to break out there in the coming years. “I don’t think the Iraqi civil war has been fought yet,” one colonel told me. Others were concerned that Iraq was drifting toward a military takeover. Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen worried that the classic conditions for a military coup were developing — a venal political elite divorced from the population lives inside the Green Zone, while the Iraqi military outside the zone’s walls grows both more capable and closer to the people, working with them and trying to address their concerns.

In addition, the American embrace of former insurgents has created many new local power centers in Iraq, but many of the faces of those who run them remain obscure. “We’ve made a lot of deals with shady guys,” Col. Michael Galloucis, the Military Police commander in Baghdad, said in 2007, at the end of his tour. “It’s working. But the key is, is it sustainable?”

One of the least understood of those “shady guys” is also one of the most prominent — Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The U.S. government has consistently underestimated him, first in going into Iraq and then in 2004, when he violently confronted the American superpower. He not only survived those encounters but also emerged more powerful and was brought into the U.S.-created Iraqi government. If he can stay alive, more power is likely to flow to him.

For reasons of nationalism, if Sadr can be drawn into the political arena, he may effectively become an ally of convenience to the Americans. “It should not be forgotten that the Sadrists are Tehran’s historical main enemy among the Shiites of Iraq,” noted Reidar Visser, an Oxford-educated expert on Iraqi Shiites. But others contend that Sadr is just lying low until the United States draws down its troops and declares its combat role concluded.

The role of Iran remains problematic. At this point, that country appears to be the biggest winner in the Iraq war, and perhaps in the region. “Iran’s influence will remain and probably grow stronger,” said Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency specialist in Middle Eastern security affairs. “The Iranians have many contacts and agents of influence in Iraq, their border with Iraq is a strategic factor of permanent consequence and their role in the Iraqi economy is growing.”

What’s more, noted Toby Dodge, a British defense expert who was an occasional adviser to Petraeus, “the current Iraqi government is full of Iranian clients. You’ll almost certainly end up with a rough and ready dictatorship . . . that will be in hock to Iran.”

But many U.S. soldiers who have served in Iraq believe that the biggest threat to American aspirations won’t be the Iranians but the Iraqis themselves. The Iraqi military is getting better, but it is still a deeply flawed institution, even with tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers keeping an eye on it.

Maj. Matt Whitney, who spent 2006 advising Iraqi generals, predicted that once U.S. forces were out of the way, Iraqi commanders would relapse to the brutal ways of earlier days: “Saddam Hussein taught them how to [suppress urban populations] and we’ve just reinforced that lesson for four years,” he said. “They’re ready to kill people — a lot of people — in order to get stability in Iraq.”

In my last interview with him, Odierno countered this thinking. He believes that Iraqi commanders have improved and that they will no longer automatically revert to Saddam-era viciousness. “I think two years ago that was true,” he said. “I think maybe even a year and a half ago it was true. I think a year ago it was a little less true. I think today it’s less true.” But, he added, problems clearly still remain, which is one reason the U.S. military presence will be required for some time.

But his hopeful assessment conflicts with the frequent statements of Iraqi commanders themselves. “When you got to know them and they’d be honest with you, every single one of them thought that the whole notion of democracy and representative government in Iraq was absolutely ludicrous,” said Maj. Chad Quayle, who advised an Iraqi battalion in south Baghdad during the surge.

So, to address the perceptive question that Petraeus posed during the invasion: How does this end?

Probably the best answer came from Charlie Miller, who did the first draft of policy development and presidential reporting for Petraeus. “I don’t think it does end,” he replied. “There will be some U.S. presence, and some relationship with the Iraqis, for decades. . . . We’re thinking in terms of Reconstruction after the Civil War.”

This is not so nice.

If Obama decides to keep his campaign promise to pull out of Iraq within 16 months — I wouldn’t care if he took two years, personally — he’ll have to prepare the American public for unpleasant consequences. A withdrawal may turn out well, leaving Iraq in relative peace and security. But if a withdrawal leads to a war that kills hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and destabilizes the region in ways that have far-reaching consequences for American national security, Republicans will make the argument that Obama and the lefties who pressured him to withdraw were irresponsible. Republicans will argue that Obama knew the risks but decided to withdraw anyway because he valued his own political fortunes ahead of what was best for Iraq and for America.

Krauthammer is already laying the groundwork for this argument in his recent column:

This is not to say that these astonishing gains are irreversible. There loom three possible threats: (a) a coup from a rising and relatively clean military disgusted with the corruption of civilian politicians — the familiar post-colonial pattern of the past half-century; (b) a strongman emerging from a democratic system (Maliki?) and then subverting it, following the Russian and Venezuelan models; or (c) the collapse of the current system because of a premature U.S. withdrawal that leads to a collapse of security.

Averting the first two is the job of Iraqis. Averting the third is the job of the U.S. Which is why President Obama’s reaction to these remarkable elections, a perfunctory statement noting that they “should continue the process of Iraqis taking responsibility for their future,” was shockingly detached and ungenerous.

When you become president of the United States you inherit its history, even the parts you would have done differently. Obama might argue that American sacrifices in Iraq were not worth what we achieved. But for the purposes of current and future policy, that is entirely moot. Despite Obama’s opposition, America went on to create a small miracle in the heart of the Arab Middle East. President Obama is now the custodian of that miracle. It is his duty as leader of the nation that gave birth to this fledgling democracy to ensure that he does nothing to undermine it.

A post-withdrawal disaster in Iraq will be a bitter pill for Dems to swallow, especially if the economy has not significantly improved by the summer of 2010. If Iraq descends into chaos over the next two years and the economy remains stagnant, Democrats can kiss their majorities in Congress goodbye — along with any expectations that Obama will win reelection in 2012.

And that puts Republicans back in control of the economy, and back in control of Iraq.

The idea that Democrats should feel compelled to make concessions in order to gain Republican support isn’t very popular among Obama supporters. When they look at President Obama’s first big political battle — his successful push to get Congress to pass a $787 billion economic rescue bill — they bemoan the concessions Senate Democrats made in order to win three measley Republican votes.

Of course, without support from those three Republicans — Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — Democrats wouldn’t have been able to prevent a Republican filabuster.

But the prevailing mood among lefties is: Bring it On! Bring on the filabuster! Let’s have Americans turn on the television every night and listen to Democrats blame Republicans for refusing to rescue our economy! Let’s show the American people just how obstructionist and unreasonable the Republicans really are!

Well, it looks like we may get our collective wish:

DENVER — President Obama has not ruled out a second stimulus package, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said on Tuesday, just before Mr. Obama signed his $787 billion recovery package into law with a statement that it would “set our economy on a firmer foundation.”

The president said he would not pretend “that today marks the end of our economic problems.”

“Nor does it constitute all of what we have to do to turn our economy around,” Mr. Obama said at the signing ceremony in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. “But today does mark the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the way of layoffs.”

Mr. Gibbs, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Denver, said, “I think the president is going to do what’s necessary to grow this economy.” While “there are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package,” he added, “I wouldn’t foreclose it.”

Here is my prediction: If Obama puts forth a second bill, none of the House and Senate Republicans who voted against the first stimulus package will even consider supporting a second passage. That leaves three Republicans — Collins, Snowe and Specter — who might come on board for a second bill, but I would put the chances of two of them immediately betraying their party a second time at close to zero. They would probably see a second bill as an opportunity to rejoin their party in hopes of avoiding a serious primary challenge when they run for reelection.

This means Democrats will probably be able to get a second stimulus bill passed in the House, but in the Senate, Democrats will be a vote or two shy of the 60 votes needed to stop Republicans from stopping the bill. Democrats (hopefully) won’t back down from advancing the bill — and Republicans won’t back down from opposing it — which means filabuster!

A filabuster is a special kind of political game — a tug of war where the rope is the American people. Every night, for as long as the filabuster lasts, Democrats and Republicans will go on television and try to pull the American people toward their position. Theoretically, a filabuster can end when one side wins the tug of war — that is, when the American people are so moved to one side of the argument that the other side caves for fear of losing votes in the next election. A filabuster can also end when both sides decide to negotiate a compromise that will allow them both to claim victory — but the media will usually declare a “winner,” even if a compromise is officially declared. It is a dangerous, high-stakes game.

Let’s say Democrats put forward a second bill. Republicans mount a filabuster. Then, Democrats campaign so successfully for their bill that Republicans end up caving under the pressure of public opinion. This would be a profound political victory for Democrats. It would clearly demonstrate the political strength of Democrats and the corresponding weakness for Republicans — and establish a political narrative that will make it much harder for Republicans to stand in the way of future Democratic efforts, such as efforts to transform our health care system. For years afterwards, Americans would remember how stubborn Republicans were in opposing a bill that most Americans ultimately supported.

On the other hand, what if Republicans end up winning the argument, and Democrats are forced to cave? This would be disasterous. It would set the stage for Republican opposition to just about everything Democrats try to achieve in Congress between now at the 2010 elections.

My advice to Democrats in Congress: If you do put together a second stimulus package, make sure every single iota of spending in the bill is 100% saleable to the American people. There should be no condoms in the bill, no resodding of the National Mall (great as that might be for the economy), no military benefits for Filipino veterans, etc. A second stimulus bill should contain only those projects that 90% of Congressional Democrats are prepared to defend until they are blue in the face on national television.

Because failure is not an option.

If you want to encounter the imperial, anti-democratic mentality that many military and media elites in the U.S. subscribe to, you could do worse than to read this Thomas E. Ricks editorial in the Washington Post:

In October 2008, as I was finishing my latest book on the Iraq war, I visited the Roman Forum during a stop in Italy. I sat on a stone wall on the south side of the Capitoline Hill and studied the two triumphal arches at either end of the Forum, both commemorating Roman wars in the Middle East.

To the south, the Arch of Titus, completed in 81 A.D., honors victories in Egypt and Jerusalem. To the north, the Arch of Septimius Severus, built 122 years later, celebrates triumphant campaigns in Mesopotamia. The structures brought home a sad realization: It’s simply unrealistic to believe that the U.S. military will be able to pull out of the Middle East.

It was a week when U.S. forces had engaged in combat in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan — a string of countries stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean — following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, the Romans and the British. For thousands of years, it has been the fate of the West’s great powers to become involved in the region’s politics. Since the Suez Crisis of 1956, when British and French influence suffered a major reduction, it has been the United States’ turn to take the lead there. And sitting on that wall, it struck me that the more we talk about getting out of the Middle East, the more deeply we seem to become engaged in it.

It is “our fate,” as a great imperial power — on the model of imperial Greece, Rome, and Britain — to “become involved” in the Mideast, to take our “turn.” We can “talk” about leaving the region to its own devices, but all the while we will inevitably “become engaged in it” more deeply.

We apparently don’t choose policy in this country — and Ricks is apparently unwilling to argue for his preference that we stay in Iraq as a matter of policy, to in other words take responsibility for his preference — but hide behind vague references to fate and inevitability and the tragic role that great powers by necessity must adopt in the wider world.

Meanwhile, talking to military personnel in Iraq, Ricks concludes that:

The quiet consensus emerging among many who have served in Iraq is that U.S. soldiers will probably be engaged in combat there until at least 2015 — which would put us at about the midpoint of the conflict now.

“What the world ultimately thinks about us and what we think about ourselves,” U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said to me last year, “is going to be determined much more by what happens from now on than what’s happened up to now.”

In other words, the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered probably haven’t even happened yet.

It’s nice to know that the “quiet consensus” that is emerging does not take into account the unambiguous and well-documented preferences of either the American or Iraqi people. To be clear here: what bothers me most about Ricks’ editorial isn’t his preferred policy — staying in Iraq for years, if not decades, to come — but his attempt to conceal his preference behind the vague passive-voiced rhetoric of inevitability, fate, and the imperial-minded White Man’s burden.

I can argue with — and respect — someone who takes responsibility for his preferences and political stances, but there is no reasonable way to argue with those who dishonestly speak in the self-effacing language of inevitability, of the fact that we will “probably be engaged in combat” without recognizing that — though we can’t make the world conform to our dreams and wishes; that is, we live in the world we have, not the world we want — we nonetheless get to choose whether we’re engaged in combat in Iraq, and accept the consequences of withdrawal. We decided to go in; we can decided to leave.

If you think we ought to say — or that the cost of leaving is too high — Thomas E. Ricks, tell me why.

I believe Obama’s one-hour nationally-televised prime-time press conference tonight did a lot to make it more likely that the Democrats’ $800-billion-plus stimulus plan will pass quickly. (If you want to watch Obama’s impressive performance, you can scroll to the bottom of this blog.)

Obama’s got great style, but what really made his remarks so effective was the substance. Obama made several important points that speak forcefully to the out-of-control debate and hype that has been eroding public support and Congressional support for the bill:

1. He communicated clearly about what this bill is intended to accomplish, and why:

It is absolutely true that we can’t depend on government alone to create jobs or economic growth. That is and must be the role of the private sector. But at this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money, which leads to even more layoffs. And breaking that cycle is exactly what the plan that’s moving through Congress is designed to do.

In other words, this bill isn’t solely focused on creating permanent private-sector jobs — only the private sector can do that (althought the government can help). The point of this bill is to “break the vicious cycle” of job losses leading to reduced consumer spending leading to job losses, and so on. That’s why Obama wants to create so many jobs that may be temporary — to temporarily break this cycle and “jolt” the economy back to life. It’s true that many of the jobs created in the legislation won’t last more than a year or two or three — but by then, the cycle will have ended and the private sector will begin expanding, rather than contracting, and new, more long-terms jobs will once again be available.

2. Obama defended many of the various components of the bill, and he defended them in a variety of ways, thereby inspiring confidence that this bill is well thought-out. For example, he defended the projects that will create jobs directly, but he also defended the portions of the bill that extend benefits to the poor, the middle class, and the unemployed.

When passed, this plan will ensure that Americans who’ve lost their jobs through no fault of their own can receive greater unemployment benefits and continue their health care coverage. We will also provide a $2,500 tax credit to folks who are struggling to pay the cost of their college tuition, and $1,000 worth of badly needed tax relief to working and middle-class families. These steps will put more money in the pockets of those Americans who are most likely to spend it, and that will help break the cycle and get our economy moving.

Obama spoke directly to the critics who say “health care benefits may be worthwhile, but do they belong in a recovery bill?” Yes, the do — because providing assistance to these people will keep demand up and help break the cycle.

3. When it came to the issue of “bipartisanship,” Obama was respectful toward Republicans who sincerely disagree with him — and drew a distinction between sincere philosophical disagreements and over-the-top partisan rhetoric. This tone of reasonableness and civility is a powerful force in terms of inspiring the public to follow his lead. He also made it clear that sometimes the philosophical divide is so wide that compromise is impossible, even when both sides are sincere and negotiate in good faith. This helps explain why the party line vote we’re likely to see on this bill isn’t a failure of bipartisanship.

As I said, the one concern I’ve got on the stimulus package, in terms of the debate and listening to some of what’s been said in Congress is that there seems to be a set of folks who — I don’t doubt their sincerity — who just believe that we should do nothing. Now, if that’s their opening position or their closing position in negotiations, then we’re probably not going to make much progress, because I don’t think that’s economically sound and I don’t think what — that’s what the American people expect, is for us to stand by and do nothing.

There are others who recognize that we’ve got to do a significant recovery package but they’re concerned about the mix of what’s in there. And if they’re sincere about it, then I’m happy to have conversations about this tax cut versus that — that tax cut or this infrastructure project versus that infrastructure project.

But what I — what I’ve been concerned about is some of the language that’s been used suggesting that this is full of pork and this is wasteful government spending, so on and so forth. First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now.

Number two is that, although there are some programs in there that I think are good policy, some of them aren’t job creators. I think it’s perfectly legitimate to say that those programs should be out of this particular recovery package, and we can deal with them later.

But when they start characterizing this as pork without acknowledging that there are no earmarks in this package — something, again, that was pretty rare over the last eight years — then you get a feeling that maybe we’re playing politics instead of actually trying to solve problems for the American people.

4. Obama exposed some of the most absurd arguments Republicans have made in opposition to the bill:

This is another concern that I’ve had in some of the arguments that I’m hearing. When people suggest that what a waste of money to make federal buildings more energy-efficient — why would that be a waste of money? We’re creating jobs immediately by retrofitting these buildings or weatherizing 2 million Americans’ homes, as was called for in the package. So that right there creates economic stimulus, and we are saving taxpayers, when it comes to federal buildings, potentially $2 billion. In the case of homeowners, they will see more money in their pockets. And we’re reducing our dependence on foreign oil in the Middle East. Why wouldn’t we want to make that kind of investment?

Now, maybe philosophically you just don’t think that the federal government should be involved in energy policy. I happen to disagree with that. I think that’s the reason why we find ourselves importing more foreign oil right now than we did back in the early ’70s, when OPEC first formed. And we can have a respectful debate about whether or not we should be involved in energy policymaking, but don’t suggest that somehow that’s wasteful spending. That’s exactly what this country needs.

The same applies when it comes to information technologies and health care. We know that health care is crippling businesses and making us less competitive, as well as breaking the banks of families all across America. And part of the reason is we’ve got the most inefficient health care system imaginable. We’re still using paper. We’re — we’re still filing things in triplicate. Nurses can’t read the prescriptions that doctors — that doctors have written out. Why wouldn’t we want to put that on an — put that on an electronic medical record that will reduce error rates, reduce our long-term cost of health care, and create jobs right now?

Education, yet another example. The suggestion is, why should the federal government be involved in school construction? Well, I visited a school down in South Carolina that was built in the 1850s. Kids are still learning in that school — as best they can. When the — when the railroad — when the — it’s right next to a railroad, and when the train runs by the whole building shakes and the teacher has to stop teaching for a while. The — the auditorium is completely broken down and they can’t use it. So why wouldn’t we want to build state-of-the-art schools with science labs that are teaching our kids the skills they need for the 21st century, that will enhance our economy and, by the way, right now will create jobs?

Obama made the connection between creating jobs now — to break the downward spiral of job losses and falling demand — and investing in our economic future. Understanding the difference between these two goals is key to understanding how the bill works, and Obama did that well.

5. Obama was clear about how we can hold him accountable, how we can judge if the stimulus bill is working:

I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving 4 million jobs. That’s bottom line number one, because if people are working, then they’ve got enough confidence to make purchases, to make investments. Businesses start seeing that consumers are out there with a little more confidence. And they start making investments, which means they start hiring workers.

So step number one, job creation.

Step number two, are we seeing the credit markets operate effectively? You know, I can’t tell you how many businesses that I talk to that are successful businesses but just can’t get credit. Part of the problem in Elkhart that I heard about today was the fact that this is the RV capital of America. You’ve got a bunch of RV companies that have customers who want to purchase RVs, but even though their credit is good, they can’t get the loan.

Now, the businesses also can’t get loans to make payments to their suppliers. But when they have consumers, consumers can’t get the loans that they need. So normalizing the credit markets is, I think, step number two.

Step number three is going to be housing. Have we stabilized the housing market? Now, you know, the federal government doesn’t have complete control over that. But if our plan is effective, working with the Federal Reserve Bank, working with the FDIC, I think what we can do is stem the rate of foreclosure and we can start stabilizing housing values over time.

And the most — the biggest measure of success is whether we stop contracting and shedding jobs, and we start growing again. Now, you know, I don’t have a crystal ball, and as I said, this is an unprecedented crisis. But my hope is that after a difficult year — and this year is going to be a difficult year — that businesses start investing again, they start making decisions that, you know, in fact, there’s money to be made out there; customers — or consumers start feeling that their jobs are stable and safe, and they start making purchases again. And if we get things right then, starting next year, we can start seeing some significant improvement.

Clarity and accountability are what Obama had to convey in this press conference, and I thought he did a really great job.

If you respect Politico as I do — and if you respect Politico’s “The Arena” as I do (the Arena is sort of a bulletin board where various commentators over their perspectives on various issues), then I’m sure you’ll respect the following post by Jeff Emanuel, who wrote this about Obama’s performance:

Was he effective? It’s difficult to emphasize the word “no” emphatically enough. What we saw tonight in President Obama was a man who, flailing about for words and faiing to form cohesive sentences and responses, turned in a stumbling, meandering performance worthy of the most extreme caricature of George W. Bush.

It’s no secret that I am no fan of President Obama; however, this press conference was incredibly painful to watch all the same. Behind the podium tonight, Mr. Obama displayed an apparent inability to issue even the slightest semblance of an answer to the questions asked by the reporters on hand, despite meandering responses often in excess of ten minutes per query (he couldn’t even give a straight answer to the yes-or-no question about whether he would allow media outlets to resume their perverted publishing of flag-draped coffin photographs).

What he did not display was anything remotely resembling a strong argument for the trillion-dollar “stimulus” package (Health care is failing because doctors have poor handwriting? Schools build in the antebellum South are still being used, but teaching has to be “stopped for a while” when trains go by? The list goes on, and it doesn’t get any better).

Contra his reputation as a smooth speaker and Reaganesque “Great Communicator,” the President Obama we saw tonight looked out of place, unprepared, and unable to coherently respond to any questions the White House press corps put to him, whether it be on the “stimulus” or on foreign policy (Iran, Afghanistan), a topic on which Mr. Obama appeared even more hopelessly lost than the rest.

Flailing about for words? Unprepared? Hopelessly Lost? Worthy of the most extreme charicature of George W. Bush? Incredibly painful to watch? Thank God that Politico put me in touch with these brilliant insights.

You can be the judge:

Obama press conference 1

Obama press conference 2

Obama press conference 3

Obama press conference 4

Obama press conference 5

Obama press conference 6

Obama press conference 7

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t happy that the Senate wants to cut $86 billion from an $800-billion-plus economic stimulus package the House passed about two weeks ago. Here is what she’s been saying, according to a recent article in Politico.

“These cuts are very damaging — [the House bill] was put together very carefully. … The funding goes directly to school districts, they are stimulative because they maintain jobs instead of cutting jobs.” …

The new Senate cuts, if passed, “will do violence to the future,” said Pelosi, who is also pressing a reluctant Obama to repeal Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy before they expire at the end of 2010. 

It seemed that finally Pelosi understands the arguments she should have been prepared to make weeks ago when the bill first passed in the House — that the bill “was put together very carefully,” and that all the spending in the bill is so critical, so necessary to our economic future that making any cuts whatsoever will “do violence to the future.”

If only Pelosi had realized at the outset that winning these arguments would be absolutely crucial to getting this bill passed! If only she had, Democrats might have been able to compel at least a few House and Senate Republicans to support a far better bill than what is currently on the table.

But, unfortunately, she clearly didn’t.

Instead, Dems immediately agreed to remove a multi-million-dollar expenditure on contraceptives. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin theatrically tore a page from the bill, saying all the Republicans’ complaints amount to only a tiny fraction of the bill’s overall price tag.  And Obama had this to say about the debate over whether the bill is as good as it should be:

“Legislation of such magnitude deserves the scrutiny that it’s received over the last month, and it will receive more in the days to come,” Mr. Obama said. “But we can’t afford to make ‘perfect’ the enemy of the absolutely necessary.”

The Democrats’ response wasn’t to defend the spending in the bill — but merely to try to cast the critics as petty nit-pickers for raising these sorts of questions in the first place. As far as Pelosi and her fellow Congressional Dems were concerned, the idea that this bill was “put together very carefully” was to be swallowed whole without any strong justification — and anyone who dared to suggest otherwise would be frowned upon and dismissed. As far as Obama was concerned, lawmakers should vote for the bill even though it wasn’t actually put together very carefully at all.

Republicans LOVE IT when Democrats try to use frowns, disapproval and evasion as a substitute for legitimate debate.

The following excerpt from a Newsweek column pretty much sums up the tactics Republicans have successfully employed to convince a large majority of Americans that the stimulus bill will do more harm than good:

The interview was nearly over. on the Fox News Channel last Wednesday evening, Sean Hannity was coming to the end of a segment with Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, the chair of the House Republican Conference and a vociferous foe of President Obama’s nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill. How, Pence had asked rhetorically, was $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts going to put people back to work in Indiana? How would $20 million for “fish passage barriers” (a provision to pay for the removal of barriers in rivers and streams so that fish could migrate freely) help create jobs? Hannity could not have agreed more. “It is … the European Socialist Act of 2009,” the host said, signing off. “We’re counting on you to stop it. Thank you, congressman.”

Pence’s opposition to the bill may be stupid overall, but his questions aren’t unreasonable. Why was $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts included in this stimulus legislation? Why was $20 million for removing “fish passage barriers” included?

If you want to argue, as Pelosi does, that the bill was “put together very carefully,” then you have to explain persuasively that these items reflect careful thought. Why is it better to spend $70 million on these two items when that same $70 million could be spent on something else?

Unfortunately, Democrats have utterly failed to respond to these sorts of questions. And now, many Americans are looking at the giant void where answers should be and are wondering if the void exists because Democrats can’t answer them. And as Americans start to worry that Dems may be stuffing their bill with pork, Republicans are taking advantage of these growing doubts. 

Where Democrats have refused to defend the specific provisions in their bill, Republicans have filled the void with ceaseless attacks:

The decision by Obama and Democratic congressional leaders to load the stimulus with so many partisan projects is politically shrewd and economically suspect. The president’s claims of bipartisanship were mostly a sham, as he skillfully maneuvered Republicans into a no-win position: either support a Democratic program; or oppose it — and seem passive and uncaring.

                                                                           — Robert Samuelson, Washington Post

In a fateful decision, Democratic leaders merged the temporary stimulus measure with their permanent domestic agenda — including big increases for Pell Grants, alternative energy subsidies and health and entitlement spending. The resulting package is part temporary and part permanent, part timely and part untimely, part targeted and part untargeted. …

In testimony this week, Alice Rivlin, Bill Clinton’s former budget director, raised the possibility of separating the temporary from the permanent measures and focusing independently on each. “A long-term investment program should not be put together hastily and lumped in with the anti-recession package,” Rivlin testified. “The elements of the investment program must be carefully planned and will not create many jobs right away.”

                                                                                            – David Brooks, New York Times

The final bill was privately agreed by most and publicly conceded by many to be a big, messy, largely off-point and philosophically chaotic piece of legislation. The Congressional Budget Office says only 25% of the money will even go out in the first year. This newspaper, in its analysis, argues that only 12 cents of every dollar is for something that could plausibly be called stimulus. …

What was needed? Not pork, not payoffs, not eccentric base-pleasing, group-greasing forays into birth control as stimulus, as the speaker of the House dizzily put it before being told to remove it.

                                                                                     — Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal

It’s possible that Congressional Democrats didn’t defend their bill because they were just lazy. It’s also possible that they didn’t defend their bill because they didn’t want to dignify their critics with a response. Or, it may be that they didn’t defend their bill because the bill was simply indefensible from a political standpoint. Is giving $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts defensible? Can any Democrat reasonably expect to convince a majority of American taxpayers that spending $50 million of their money on the National Endowment for the Arts is urgently needed to save our economy?

Unfortunately, the time for making that argument has come and gone. Facing no Democratic push-back whatsoever, Republicans have made so much headway in selling their argument that the bill is stuffed with pork that now Democrats have no choice except to force a bill through, partisan-style, using fear-based arguments. Obama says it is “irresponsible and inexcusable” to delay passage of the bill, and warns of “catastrophe” if it doesn’t pass.

In other words, Obama and the Dems must use fear and partisanship to sell a bill they have been unwilling or unable to defend. Does this remind you of any other political party from, say, about seven years ago?

As I’ve argued before, the blame for this unfortunate turn of events falls on the shoulders on Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional Democrats who originally drafted a bill without a plan to rigorously defend it. I totally agree with Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi:

What happened with Obama’s economic stimulus plan also stings. Democrats couldn’t wait to push as much of their liberal economic agenda as possible, as quickly as possible, whether or not it helped Obama’s post-partisan agenda. Their nearly trillion-dollar package merely reordered the funding priorities that have existed for decades.

“We have his back,” declared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a retreat for House Democrats in Williamsburg, Va. This expression of solidarity came after Pelosi allowed her members to stab Obama in the back. With Pelosi’s acquiescence, the House-passed bill was packed with items that are easy for taxpayers to think of as old-fashioned spending, not economic jump-starting.

Meanwhile, Senate majority leader Harry Reid happily confirmed that he will make sure his home state of Nevada benefits from the stimulus package, via spending targeted for Las Vegas’s airport and casinos. To average citizens, that sounds like pork-barrel business as usual. A deal was struck late Friday for a pared-down stimulus package. It must be approved by the full Senate and reconciled with the House version. …

The president has yet to sell the stimulus package as the best answer to the country’s economic woes. That’s partly because last year’s stimulus package did nothing to stop the slide, let alone turn it around; and partly because his own party hijacked it.

Obama’s two daughters have been lobbying for a canine pet for awhile. Maybe they instinctively know what Harry Truman learned from experience.

If you want a friend in the nation’s capital, get one that barks but doesn’t bite.