History is Happening Now

Do the folks who write editorials for the Wall Street Journal ever talk to the folks who write articles for the Wall Street Journal?

Consider recent reporting/opining about Barack Obama’s $800-billion-plus economic stimulus bill. Here’s how Greg Hitt and Elizabeth Williamson describe it in their article from January 28, 2009:

The economic stimulus package proposed by Democratic House leaders totals $825 billion and includes three broad pieces: a $365.6 billion spending measure for such brick-and-mortar projects as highways and bridges; a $180 billion measure to boost jobless benefits and Medicaid, among other things; and a $275 billion tax-relief package, which includes a plan to give a $500 payroll tax holiday to all workers, a proposal from Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign.

If you pay attention to the arguments that the super-pundits of the right are making in their efforts to defeat this bill, you’d think it was different. Here’s an excerpt from a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal:

In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill will make “dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy.” Well, you be the judge. Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There’s another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.

Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren’t likely to help the economy immediately. As Peter Orszag, the President’s new budget director, told Congress a year ago, “even those [public works] that are ‘on the shelf’ generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy.”

So let’s try to understand. According to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, the following things can “plausibly be considered a growth stimulus”: fixing bridges or other highway projects, broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects. Presumably, all these projects fall under the category of “a $365.6 billion spending measure for such brick-and-mortar projects as highways and bridges,” as reported in the news article. So if you subtract the $70 billion in construction projects mentioned in the editorial from the $365.6 billion in the news article, you get … $295 billion in “such brick-and-mortar projects as highways and bridges.”

Why can the $70 billion mentioned “plausibly be considered a growth stimulus” but the other $295 billion can’t? The editorial doesn’t say.

Also, the editorial refers to the $20 billion in business tax cuts as spending that “can plausibly be considered stimulus,” leaving out at least 90% of “a $275 billion tax-relief package, which includes a plan to give a $500 payroll tax holiday to all workers,” as reported in the article.

Why can $20 billion in business tax cuts “plausibly be considered stimulus,” but more than $250 billion in additional tax cuts cannot? Once again, the editorial doesn’t say. It’s as though the rest of the tax cuts in the bill don’t exist.

The editorial has this to say later on:

Here’s another lu-lu: Congress wants to spend $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles. Congress also wants to spend $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities. The Smithsonian is targeted to receive $150 million; we love the Smithsonian, too, but this is a job creator?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand how it might help the economy if the United States government pumped $600 million into the market for new cars at a time when the American auto industry is on the verge of collapse. And as for the $7 billion for “modernizing federal buildings and facilities,” it’s impossible to fathom how the Wall Street Journal could miss that this project supports jobs: It provides money to employ the people who will be modernizing federal buildings and facilities.

It’s interesting how the editorial uses different terms at different times in order to avoid acknowledging the incoherence of its arguments. For example, the editorial refers to some projects as “arguably worthwhile priorities,” as if the most important criteria we should use to evaluate spending items is whether the spending is “worthwhile.” Then, in the next paragraph, it refers to projects that “can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus,” as if the most important issue is not whether a project is “worthwhile,” but whether a project stimulates growth. Then, later on, the editorial asks if a particular project is a “job creator,” as if this is the most important issue.

What if the editorial were forced to be consistent — forced, in other words, to evaluate whether the modernization of federal buildings and facilities is “worthwhile” or “can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus”? I think the answers to these questions would obviously be yes, and the same goes for the plan to spend a measley $600 million on cars.

Here’s another paragraph from the editorial:

We’ve looked it over, and even we can’t quite believe it. There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.

In discussing the $1 billion for Amtrak, they abandon altogether the idea that the spending should be “worthwhile” or “stimulus” or a “job creator,” and assert instead that Amtrak shouldn’t get the money because it hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years. Why is it relevant that Amtrak doesn’t turn a profit? The editorial doesn’t say. Then, it mysteriously mentions child-care subsidies and then refuses to make any argument about why it’s notable — an understandable omission, since these subsidies are worthwhile, they do create jobs, they can be considered stimulus, and child care workers generally turn a small profit.

And there’s this bit in the editorial:

Oh, and don’t forget education, which would get $66 billion more. That’s more than the entire Education Department spent a mere 10 years ago and is on top of the doubling under President Bush. Some $6 billion of this will subsidize university building projects. If you think the intention here is to help kids learn, the House declares on page 257 that “No recipient . . . shall use such funds to provide financial assistance to students to attend private elementary or secondary schools.” Horrors: Some money might go to nonunion teachers.

First of all, it’s fascinating to consider the Wall Street Journal’s argument: If you think the intention behind spending $66 billion on education is to help children learn, you’re wrong — and the reason you’re wrong is that the money won’t give students tuition to private schools. Consider how stupid or blinded by ideology you’d have to be to accept this argument as logical. Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal is now suggesting that this $66 billion should be evaluated based on whether it helps kids learn. What about “stimulus?” What about “job creation?” What about “worthwhile priorities?” Why can it “plausibly be considered a growth stimulus” to repair a road or a bridge, but not a school building?

The editorial also includes this:

Another “stimulus” secret is that some $252 billion is for income-transfer payments — that is, not investments that arguably help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing at all. There’s $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don’t pay income tax. While some of that may be justified to help poorer Americans ride out the recession, they aren’t job creators.

So now the issue at hand is whether these expenditures “help everyone,” and whether these expenditures are “job creators.” Obviously, by definiton, jobless benefits are not going to be job creators — but isn’t it obvious that expanding benefits to the poor and unemployed will help the economy, as the poor and unemployed are the most likely to spend the money given to them, rather than saving or investing it? Can’t these programs “plausibly be considered growth stimulus?”

As for the idea that the spending should “help everyone,” it’s hard to see how federal money spent repairing a bridge on the west coast will help folks on the east coast, but these projects are apparently acceptable to the Wall Street Journal.

The editorial is so transparently disingenuous and manipulative that it’s hard to understand why such as editorial isn’t embarressing to the newspaper — but then, the Journal’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, probably figures that right-wingers aren’t looking for clarity and logic.

I’m predicting the final vote on Obama’s $800 billion-plus fiscal stimulus bill will be split along party lines, with only a few rogue Republicans in the House and Senate voting to support the bill.

In spite of Obama’s extraordinary efforts to work with the G.O.P. on this legislation, Republicans won’t support the bill for a variety of reasons. As Politico notes:

With most moderates having retired or been defeated, especially among House Republicans, there is little political danger in opposing nearly another trillion dollars in spending at a time when many conservative-leaning voters are weary of government intervention after months of bailouts.

In other words, the moderates — those Republicans who would have been most tempted to support the bill — were replaced with Democrats in the last election.

Furthermore, Republicans understand that in order for their party to return to power anytime soon, Obama must not go down in history as a phenomenally successful president; and this means they cannot hand Obama a massive political victory in the first weeks of his presidency. In his final column for the New York Times, Conservative columnist William Kristol correctly identifies the significance of Obama’s fortunes. He begins by acknowledging (proclaiming?) that a conservative era in American politics that began with Ronald Reagan has ended. Then, he considers whether the new era will be a liberal one:

The answer lies in the hands of one man: the 44th president. If Reagan’s policies had failed, or if he hadn’t been politically successful, the conservative ascendancy would have been nipped in the bud. So with President Obama today. Liberalism’s fate rests to an astonishing degree on his shoulders. If he governs successfully, we’re in a new political era. If not, the country will be open to new conservative alternatives.

I believe Kristol is right: If Obama is seen as a successful president, it will not only empower him to make significant progress in implementing his agenda throughout his eight years in office — it will also set the stage for Democratic dominance of American politics for a generation. Which is not what the uber-conservative Republicans want at all. So they can’t acknowledge that Obama’s plan is good for the country.

Finally, it seems that many conservatives honestly don’t think the stimulus bill will work. Consider the following reporting from Politico:

Obama’s soothing tones Tuesday couldn’t mask his disagreement with Republicans on the need for more tax cuts in the package. That was the first question he took in his meeting on the House side — and Obama brushed it away with a polite, but firm, no thanks.

“Feel free to whack me over the head because I probably will not compromise on that part,” Obama said of Republican opposition to the Democrats’ refundable tax credits, according to two sources in the room.

Finger-pointing aside, that partisan reality gets at why the relationship is fraying: irreconcilable differences.

“It lasted about two days,” quipped Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), when asked if the honeymoon was over.

Why so soon?

Because, he said, conservatives are just “not receptive” to Obama’s agenda.

Yet even Inhofe, a true-believing conservative who represents a state in which Obama lost every county, is unwilling to take after his former colleague.

“He is very likable, he presented himself very well, and he seemed to want to be inclusive,” Inhofe said in a brief interview following Obama’s meeting. “But if the product is anything like we think it’s going to be, it’s not one that is going to be sellable to conservatives.”

In other words, a lot of Republicans will oppose the bill because it’s just not what conservatives want to do. That’s American democracy.

For all of these reasons, Republicans won’t give Obama the “bipartisan” support he is looking for. Nevertheless, the bill will pass — and then Obama’s political fortunes will rise or fall based on how effectively the bill turns our country’s economic frown upside-down. Of course, not long after the bill passes — maybe a few months later, maybe six months later — Republicans will argue that the bill was a dismal failure, and Democrats will argue that the bill was a smashing success. I believe this is basically the debate that will determine whether Congressional Democrats keep their majorities in Congress in 2010.

So lets hope the bill is a success, for the sake of the millions of Americans who will benefit from a strong economy, and for the sake of the millions of Americans who will benefit from another two years of Democratic governance.

So if Obama is doomed to fail in his efforts to win lots of yes votes from both parties on his stimulus bill, what is the point of all his extraordinary ”reaching out” to Republicans? All right, all right, perhaps calling it “extraordinary” is over-the-top. The media uses the word “rare.” As in:

Obama’s trip to Capitol Hill was rare for a sitting president, especially given his decision to meet only with the opposition. He met with Democratic lawmakers earlier this month.

                                                               -  The Washington Post

A week after being sworn into office, Mr. Obama returned to the Capitol for the first of what his advisers said would be frequent visits with members of Congress. Yet it was still a rare event for a president, particularly a Democratic one, to sit down with the entire Republican conference. …

It was far too early to say whether Mr. Obama’s visit to Capitol Hill would attract any more Republican votes for the economic recovery plan that is scheduled to be considered on Wednesday in the House. But officials from both sides said it was the beginning of a dialogue between Congressional Republicans and the White House that did not exist even when George W. Bush was in the Oval Office.

                                                                -  The New York Times

The rare trip by a president to Capitol Hill revealed the urgency in Congress and the White House over a cure for the souring economy

                                                                          –  The Wall Street Journal

So the Washington press corps seems to agree that Obama’s visit with Congressional Republicans was “rare.” It is also worth noting that his visit effectively compelled a number of Republicans to say nice things about him. Consider this from the L.A. Times:

Despite their opposition to the stimulus plan, many House Republicans came away from their meeting with Obama saying the president had impressively laid the groundwork for future cooperation.

“I thought it was a great gesture on his part and it begins a dialogue,” (Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis) said. “He did a good job starting us off, at least, beginning to talk to one another. And that will help him in the future.”

And this from the New York Times:

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said after the meeting that significant philosophical differences remained between the president and the Republicans, but they also agreed on several fronts. The mere fact of the meeting, he said, was an early sign of a willingness by the White House to solicit input from all sides.

“We both share a sincere belief that we have to have a plan that works, that will revive our economy, create jobs and help preserve jobs in our country,” Mr. Boehner said. “I think our members enjoyed the conversation. I think the president enjoyed the conversation. I look forward to continuing to work with him to improve this package.”         

And this from Politico:

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), one of the House Republicans on Obama’s target list, lavished praise on the president for coming to visit in an interview after the lunch. But she indicated she was still uncertain if she could reward his effort.

“Do we need a stimulus? I believe we do. But do we need to spend the amount that were spending? I’m not convinced of that.”

Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), asked if any of her colleagues were more inclined to support the stimulus measure after their back and forth with Obama, was more blunt: “I don’t think so.”

Of course, she didn’t want to place the blame at the president’s feet.

“It’s unfortunate that their leadership didn’t negotiate with us,” Biggert said. “The problem is that the process now is too far down the road.”

But, with a twinkle, she said, “he really cares about what he’s doing.”

Obama is “sincere.” He is “laying the groundwork for future cooperation.” He “did a good job” getting them to “talk to one another.” He has a “willingness” to “solicit input from all sides.” He “presented himself very well, and seemed to want to be inclusive.” He “really cares about what he’s doing.”

I don’t know what all this praise means, but it will be interesting to see how many of these same Republicans are willing to support nasty campaign ads against Obama in four years. It may be that Obama is actually setting a new tone in Washington — and setting a new precedent against with all future presidents will be judged in their treatment of members of Congress.

UPDATE: It appears the bill may win at least one Republican Senator’s vote, according to this report from a Politico article released tonight:

Rising above the fray Tuesday — but almost omnipresent — was Obama himself, meeting with rank-and-file House and Senate Republicans and making his case that the floor votes ahead are just the first steps in a larger action plan to address financial regulations, home foreclosures and banks teetering near insolvency.

“His presentation was a tour de force,” New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg told Politico. The top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, Gregg has been an outspoken critic of the level of new spending in the administration’s plan but said: “I felt much better. … He’s clearly moving forward aggressively on all the different fronts. I was very impressed. If he puts it in the context of an integrated effort, I’d consider it.”

Now why didn’t George W. Bush meet with rank-and-file Democrats and impress them with his “tour de force” presentations about his overall strategy in the War on Terror?

I guess we’ll never know.

Some Republicans want Obama to be a successful president, and others want him to be a failure.

The most important Republican in the success column is Newt Gingrich. This is what he said last month, effectively daring other national leaders of the Republican Party to disagree:

“I think the country is so tired right now of a style of Republican attack politics that has become a caricature of itself, they instinctively go, ‘I’m tired of that,’ ” said Newt Gingrich, a Republican and former speaker of the House. “It’s ineffective against Barack Obama right now. The country is faced with serious problems and is about to have a brand new president. You’d have to be irrational not to want the new president to succeed.”

Saul Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and a leading candidate to become the next leader of the Republican National Committee, offered a similar message on his blog. “Where necessary,” Mr. Anuzis wrote, “we should stand for what is right and forcefully be the loyal opposition. But partisan politics in times like these for the sake of politics is not healthy. “

The most important Republican (so far) who wants to see failure is Rush Limbaugh. Here is what he recently said in comments that were clearly intended to criticize Gingrich, Anuzis, and others like them:

On his radio show last week, Rush Limbaugh railed against “people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, ‘Well, I hope he succeeds. We have to give him a chance.’”

“Why?” Limbaugh demanded. “They didn’t give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated, the search-and-destroy mission had begun. I’m not talking about search-and-destroy, but I’ve been listening to Barack Obama for a year and a half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don’t want them to succeed.”

It’s noteworthy, I think, that Limbaugh’s first argument for wanting to see Obama fail is that so many Americans wanted Bush to fail in January 2001. In other words, Limbaugh sets aside the issue of what is best for the country, and focuses instead on the competition between the parties. (Limbaugh’s attitude is “partisan politics … for the sake of politics,” as Anuzis put it.) This attitude – that anything that’s good for Democrats is bad for Republicans, and what’s best for the country is merely an afterthought – is what enables Gingrich to pretend there is no difference between Obama’s overall success and Obama’s success at making progressive change.

Of course, this country is chock full of Republicans who don’t like the idea of universal health care, who believe it’s dangerous for Barack Obama to speak with our enemies, who think talk about the threat of global warming is a bunch of hoo-haw, and oppose Obama’s efforts to stimulate the economy through government spending. I disagree with these people, but I certainly recognize their right as free people to express their resistance to progressive ideas.

But Obama’s overall goals include keeping the American people safe, rescuing the American economy so people can find work to support themselves and their families, and working to bring about a more peaceful, healthy, prosperous world. After all, Obama’s “politics” — in other words, Obama’s progressive agenda — reflect these overall goals.

In wanting Obama to fail, Limbaugh might as well be saying he hopes Obama fails to keep us safe, fails to help people provide for their families, fails to improve the education of our children, etc. If Obama does fail, it will certainly damage the Democratic Party and help the Republicans. But it will also damage the country.

For some reason, it doesn’t matter that Obama has given every indication that he intends to include Republicans in his governance.

Consider the following from a recent Politico article:

It’s no secret Barack Obama is trying to seduce Republicans these days. But his conservative courting runs much deeper and wider than is publicly known.

Obama has had meetings with his former opponent John McCain, GOP congressional leaders and some of the country’s leading conservative commentators. He’s also honoring McCain and Colin Powell in high-profile pre-inaugural dinners, where Obama is expected to toast the Republicans.

Behind the scenes, Obama and his team are working just as hard, courting prominent Republicans and conservatives through frequent phone calls, e-mails and private sit-downs.

The selection of evangelical pastor Rick Warren for the inaugural invocation and Obama’s dinner with right-of-center writers at George F. Will’s home drew significant buzz. But the transition also has quietly reached out to other prominent figures atop the Southern Baptist Church, Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministry and the Jewish Orthodox Union.

“I think he’s done an extremely good job so far,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who received a call from the president-elect last week. “On both the quality of his nominees and the contact that he personally or his skeleton staff have had with members on the Hill — I think they’ve done just an exceptional job at that.”

It’s completely relevant that Gingrich is a professional political leader and Limbaugh is a professional radio talk show host. Limbaugh makes money by entertaining and titillating people with his over-the-top condemnation of liberals — he is an “outrage performance artist,” as Lee put it, and a “comedian,” as Keith Olbermann puts it.

Limbaugh’s industry relies upon hatred of Democrats. Even if Limbaugh believed he had a patriotic duty to hope that Obama will succeed in leading the country through the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, Limbaugh’s obligation to his employer, to his business, would compel him to continue casting Obama as the great Satan.

So thanks to Newt Gingrich for being rational, and for offering an alternative to Republicans who are too smart for Limbaugh’s snake oil. Luckily, it seems like Gingrich’s tack is winning some significant support:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who just got back from the Middle East with Joe Biden, was with McCain and the president-elect in Chicago at the post-election meeting and met again with Obama Wednesday for about 45 minutes.

“Once the campaign is over, to govern you have to find consensus and I think he understands that,” said Graham, who will introduce McCain at the tribute dinner Monday. “Ronald Reagan understood the value of personal relationships and I think [Obama] understands that that model offers the best hope of sustaining momentum from the election and achieving legislative success. So far, so good.”

Graham, one of McCain’s closest friends and a frequent campaign trail companion, said much of the good will from his party stems from a patriotic desire to turn the country around.

“A lot of people, including Republicans, want us to get back on our feet because we’re on our knees. And he’s the quarterback, he’s the captain – everybody is pulling for him.”

I want Republican candidates to lose elections — but I do realize that even when they are in the minority, Republicans will influence the course of our nation’s history. I also realize that many Republican voters sincerely want what’s best for this country (even if they have bad ideas about what’s best).

And so even I, a happy Democrat, was flabbergasted when I recently read a blog on Townhall.com written by Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio Secretary of State and one of the leading candidates to be the G.O.P.’s next chairman:

A week ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, mentioned Mr. Obama says his goal is for 80% of these three million jobs to be private-sector. That means, Senator McConnell continued, that 20% would be public-sector, meaning this bill would create 600,000 new federal government jobs. For comparison, Mr. McConnell noted this would be the size of the entire Postal Service workforce.

Once government creates a job, it rarely eliminates it. Government swells by nature, feeding on tax dollars taken away from private citizens and employers until it becomes a bloated, sprawling bureaucracy.

So if Mr. Obama creates 600,000 new government bureaucrats, those jobs should be expected to be kept around permanently, long after this economic crisis is resolved. After all, eliminating those jobs means laying off 600,000 people. Who wants to take responsibility for that?

But most federal employees, that are not political appointees, vote Democrat. Since Washington, DC is the seat of government, whenever new federal bureaucrats are created many live in Maryland and Virginia. In 2008, Virginia went Democrat for the first time since 1964, and Mr. Obama won it by 130,000 votes. Creating 600,000 new jobs might help cement Virginia in the Democrat column, making it harder for Republicans to retake the White House.

So this bill, as currently designed, has serious flaws, some of which convey a partisan advantage. These must be thoroughly discussed and understood, and any major legislation cannot be allowed to benefit one party in what must be a bipartisan solution.

Of course, Blackwell’s policy-based opposition to the creation of 600,000 new federal jobs isn’t surprising – the language of “a bloated, sprawling bureaucracy” and a government “feeding on tax dollars taken away from private citizens” is standard right-wing rhetoric.

(If Republicans could mobilize public support with kind of talk, they would have won the last election — but alas (for them), this attitude toward government seems so outdated and simple-minded in the context of our current financial crisis. Most Americans are willing to take a chance on Obama that he is competant enough to employ 600,000 workers to make important investments in our collective future. They don’t view Obama as “feeding” and “bloated” — they view him as “investing” in our nation’s prosperity.)

But then Blackwell takes a truly awe-inspiring turn for the cynical when he suggests that hiring 600,000 new federal employees will effectively create almost 600,000 more voting Democrats in Virginia or Maryland. In other words, Blackwell is setting aside the question of whether this plan is best for the country, and arguing that Republicans should oppose it because it’s bad for the Republican Party.

For those Americans who care more about the success of the Republican Party than they care about the success of the American economy, Blackwell’s point may be persuasive. But for the rest of us — the vast majority, I would guess — Blackwell’s point is just gross. If these proposed jobs won’t help the economy, then we should obviously oppose them because they will only inflate the federal deficit and put the government in the awkward position of having to eventually fire 600,000 federal employees. And if these jobs will help the economy (and jobs tend to be helpful), then ar argument for opposing them on partisan grounds is offensive. Blackwell might as well argue that this proposal should be criticized because it would make Democrats more popular — and that will do plenty for the Democratic Party in Virginia. 

Blackwell’s post makes the Republican Party look ridiculous (which is fine with me) — but it also degrades our political discourse, appealing to a sense of paranoia and division. Republicans can forcefully advance Republican arguments without reducing every political issue to a question of which party wins and which party loses. Blackwell’s post may be bad for Republicans, but it’s bad for the country as well.  

Just imagine what would happen if our elected leaders took Blackwell’s advice, and “thoroughly discussed,” perhaps on C-SPAN, the electoral advantage Democrats would supposedly enjoy if the federal government hired another 600,000 employees. Imagine if Republican Congressmen and Senators made floor speeches arguing that “any major legislation cannot be allowed to benefit one party in what must be a bipartisan solution.”

It would be disgusting. It would send a signal to the American people that these politicians are concerned, first and foremost, with keeping their jobs — and only secondarily concerned with doing their jobs.

It may sound cheap when politicians go on television and say things like, “this isn’t about Democrat versus Republican,” or “we have to get beyond partisanship and focus on doing what’s right for the American people.” It sounds cheap because it’s difficult sometimes to imagine a politician advocating the opposite view.

Thank you, Mr. Blackwell, for demonstrating the attitude these politicians are rejecting when they say such things.

The Orwellian craziness that George W. Bush has foisted upon this country was beaten back somewhat today when Eric Holder, Obama’s choice to be the next Attorney General, appeared for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Whatever their views may be about the morality and/or effectiveness of torturing detained terrorists, most Americans are offended when they hear Bush and his spokespeople deny that the government has tortured detained terrorists.

Americans find it offensive to hear their politicians lie in an obvious, blatant way, and it is blatantly obvious to the vast majority of Americans that Bush and his spokespeople are deliberately lying when they claim that waterboarding is not torture. This ridiculous lie puts Bush’s right-wing supporters in the awkward position of having to either (a) repeat and defend Bush’s lie (and I’ve heard them do it on right-wing talk radio) or (b) acknowledge the truth but still defend Bush’s decision to lie as a morally acceptable decision. 

And our journalists are put in the awkward position of having to use pathetic phrases such as “harsh interrogation techniques” to avoid implicitly acknowledging what nearly everyone knows — that the president is lying. Like it or not, Bush’s lies don’t end with Bush himself — they spawn new lies throughout our media and culture, like an infection that quickly spreads.

I believe this is true everywhere: when politically powerful people lie, it makes it significantly harder for less powerful people to engage in an honest debate about what they want for their country — which is why tyrants constantly lie to their people.  The world George Orwell describes in his book, “1984,” is about a society where official government lying is so endemic that rational thought is effectively criminal.

Even if you think torture is acceptable and necessary, you must admit that Bush was leading our country in the direction of Orwell’s dystopia when he denied that his administration approved torture.

Eric Holder, Obama’s choice to be the next Attorney General, says waterboarding is torture. I let out a huge sigh of relief when I read this evening that Holder will publicly acknowledge the truth about our national torture policy, which means our policy-makers can begin to discuss waterboarding and other interrogation-related issues publicly without resorting to a bizzare, jargon-laden doublespeak. It means when Holder and other politicians use the word “torture,” we can assume they are speaking English, and not some absurd beaurocratic language they invented to avoid telling the truth.

From the Politico:

Holder’s unambiguous answers on torture stood in contrast those given by Michael Mukasey – then President Bush’s attorney general nominee — a year ago, when he repeatedly dodged questions about the legality of waterboarding.

Holder did not. When Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said Thursday that he considered the practice to be torture, Holder did not equivocate. “I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.”

Holder also rejected the argument made by Bush administration officials that the president’s power in a national emergency overrode constitutional restrictions.

“No one is above the law,” Holder said.

Holder’s admission came only a few days after the absurdity of the Bush Administration’s lying became especially hard to handle, when the Washington Post reported this:

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani’s health led to her conclusion. “The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge” to call it torture, she said.

Living in a world where that article goes to press and then Bush and Co. continue to insist that they do not torture — would be unbearable for anyone who values honest public debate. So Obama and Holder are clearly leading our country out of the craziness of the Bush years, and not a moment too soon.

But it seems they cannot lead us all the way.

I’m glad to live in a world where rational thought is NOT criminal — and I plan to exercise my freedom by thinking this:

If waterboarding is torture, and if George Bush (or somebody who worked for George Bush) approved waterboarding, then George Bush (or somebody who worked for George Bush) approved torture.

And if approving torture is illegal, then George Bush (or somebody who worked for George Bush) broke the law.

And if the purpose of having an Attorney General is to enforce the law through criminal prosecutions, then isn’t it the Attorney General’s PURPOSE to prosecute George Bush (or somebody who worked for George Bush) for approving torture? Isn’t that why we have an Attorney General?

Some might argue that the President is above the law due to his extremely high office, and can’t be prosecuted by the Attorney General. But Obama clearly doesn’t accept that excuse — he has said repeatedly that “no one is above the law,” when asked about Bush’s torture policy. But Obama has also implied — without actually explicitly saying — that Holder won’t prosecute Bush officials for torture.

It seems that while Holder didn’t weigh in specifically on the question of whether to prosecute Bush officials for ordering torture, he did indicate that he isn’t inclined to do so:

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) asked whether Holder would authorize criminal prosecutions of Bush Justice Department lawyers who approved “extraordinary redition” and the warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

“We don’t want to criminalize policy differences that may exist between the outgoing administration” and the incoming Obama administration, Holder said.

Holder’s view echoes that expressed by President-elect Barack Obama, who has so far indicated that he is not interested in pursuing such investigations.

So it seems we still live in a country where rationality still doesn’t reign supreme. But a half-sane world is better than nothing — and the benefits of accepting a half-portion of insanity for a few more years may outweigh the costs.

Why didn’t America win in Vietnam? As I understand it, we killed about 3,000,000 Vietnamese in that war, and the Vietnamese killed about 60,000 American troops. So we killed roughly 50 Vietnamese for every 1 American soldier killed. And yet, the Vietnamese kept fighting, and eventually the American public was forced to recognize that we had “lost” the war.

In my view, we lost because our strategy was flawed — our strategy was based on the idea that we could force the North Vietnamese to accept defeat. Ultimately, it was up to the North Vietnamese to decide whether or not to accept defeat — and so we could never win until they conceded. Our goal was to break their will to continue fighting, and it was a goal we were incapable of achieving, no matter how many Vietnamese we killed, no matter how many bombs we dropped.

Consider the following from an article about released audiotaped recordings of President Lyndon Johnson’s conversations, including a conversation with Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara:

Johnson asked McNamara about the defense budget and supply shortages. McNamara told him there were shortages of a “new rifle” called the M-16, and shortages of some ammunition and rounds used to illuminate areas for night fighting. But McNamara said there were plenty of bombs — 265,000 tons of them, either in Southeast Asia or on the way.

“Frankly, we’re going to just snow the place under with bombs,” McNamara said. “And I’m doing it purposely to make them cry, `Stop.’”

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. (Please forgive the cliche.) Similarly, you can lead an enemy to the point where you believe they will feel compelled to accept defeat — but if they don’t, then what have you accomplished? McNamara thought he could “make them cry, ’stop,’” but he couldn’t. And so 3,000,000 Vietnamese and 50,000 Americans were killed without any benefit to the United States.

In a roundtable discussion of the current Israeli-Palestinian war in the Gaza strip on the NPR program, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, Washington Post columnist and editor David Ignatius outlined a similarly flawed strategy, this time being implemented by the Israelis.

IGNATIUS: To me, the Gaza episode has illustrated, again, the essentials of the impasse in the Middle East. The Israelis faced a real security problem in the rockets that were being fired from Gaza. Hamas had agreed to cease fire that expired Dec. 19 and refused to renew it. The rockets began to launch again into Israel, and the Israelis decided to take very decisive action. The problem is, once you begin these things — and this is what we saw in Lebanon in 2006, what I saw in Beirut in 1982, long ago, when I was a correspondent there — once you start these things, how do you stop them? What are the terms under which you end them? And the Israelis are seeing in this instance, as in the past, that a decisive resolution to this kind of fight is almost impossible, because of international opinion, because of the danger of civilian casualties, a whole series of reasons. So you end up, looking for, at the end of the day, a cease-fire. And that’s where we are now. And the dickering is over when the cease fire should come, and can the Israelis get inclusion of some tough measures to reduce the flow of weapons into Gaza.

ASHBROOK: But Israel went in here saying, clearly indicating that its goal was more than, you know, some churning around and then a cease-fire –

IGNATIUS: Yes, it said that, Tom, but I think the point I want to make is that, that kind of decisive resolution that people talk about is not realistically possible. The Israeli Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit, in the first days of this, said something that I found haunting. He said, “We’re going to continue this until we break the will of the Palestinians to continue to target us.” If there’s one thing that we’ve learned in this conflict, it’s that breaking the will of the other side just doesn’t work. People keep talking in those terms, but it doesn’t happen. So you end up having to settle for halfway things that patch together a new version of the status quo ante. That doesn’t make Israelis happy. Certainly, the fighting has not made Palestinians happy. I think, for Obama, the events of the last two weeks show that a decisive, new American approach to these things — I’m talking about a new approach to the Middle East, it sounds like a hopeless task — but somehow, breaking out of the lanes in which everybody is stuck, is crucial.

Setting aside the issue of whether the war in Gaza is moral or justified, there remains the crucially important question of whether the war can achieve anything for the security of the Israeli people. Do Israelis seriously believe they can accomplish the goal of “breaking the will” of the Palestinians? Is this what the Israeli people are waiting for? Are they not concerned that a new round of horrible violence in Gaza will only harden the will of a new generation of Palestinians to fight the Israelis?

If so, the Israelis are destined to lose, and this loss will leave them in a weaker position than before the war began.

(UPDATE: Thanks to the New York Times for this editorial.)

If you want to make certain that the Central Intelligence Agency won’t torture anymore, the obvious thing to do is to hire somebody to run the CIA who opposes torture in strong terms.

According to the New York Times, the President-elect is about to appoint former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta to run the CIA. Some top Democrats are now choosing to stab their president-elect in the back by publicly making the absurd assertion that Panetta was qualified to be former President Clinton’s top staffer, but somehow isn’t qualified to run one government agency.

I believe now is an important time for those of us who hate torture and want changes in the CIA to send a loud and clear message to the complainers: SHUT UP!

Regarding Panetta: Here is what he had to say last year about torture, as reported in the New York Times:

“Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values,” he wrote in The Washington Monthly last year. “But that is a false compromise.” He also wrote: “We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.”

The article continues:

Some human rights groups praised the choice. Elisa Massimino, executive director of Human Rights First, said it was important that the new C.I.A. director be someone “who recognizes that torture is illegal, immoral, dangerous and counterproductive.”

Sounds good. But apparently Panetta’s background troubles some Democrats:

Among the lawmakers who expressed skepticism about the choice was Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and the new chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Ms. Feinstein, who would oversee any confirmation hearing for Mr. Panetta, issued a statement that signaled clear disapproval and said she had not been notified about the choice.

“My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time,” she said.

A second top Democrat, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the departing chairman of the Intelligence Committee, shares Ms. Feinstein’s concerns, Democratic Congressional aides said.

Ms. Feinstein’s Republican counterpart on the Intelligence Committee, Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, said he would be “looking hard at Panetta’s intelligence expertise and qualifications.”

It was not clear whether the skepticism would become an obstacle to the nomination of Mr. Panetta, who would succeed Michael V. Hayden, a retired Air Force general with decades of intelligence experience.

Let’s make it clear that this skepticism will NOT become an obstacle to the nomination of Panetta. And furthermore, I think the Obama administration should make it a rule to avoid notifying Senator Feinstein of anything whatsoever from now on. Maybe then she’ll have no choice except to consider what’s best for the country, rather than what’s best for her own political stature, when she evaluates matters this important.

I also have two words for the intelligence “experts” who want to perpetuate the self-serving illusion that their work is shrouded in magic and mystery:

But some intelligence experts called the selection underwhelming, given the important role the C.I.A. plays in disrupting terrorist attacks against the United States.

“It’s a puzzling choice and a high-risk choice,” said Amy Zegart, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written extensively on intelligence matters.

“The best way to change intelligence policies from the Bush administration responsibly is to pick someone intimately familiar with them,” Ms. Zegart said. “This is intelligence, not tax or transportation policy. You can’t hit the ground running by reading briefing books and asking smart questions.”

As C.I.A. director, Mr. Panetta would report to Mr. Blair. Neither choice has yet been announced.

How many American and Iraqi lives have been lost in just the past eight years (not to mention the countless millions who have lost their lives in recent decades) due to stupid, inexcusable blunders by the CIA? The difference between intelligence policy and tax or transportation policy is that intelligence officials are never held accountable until their stupid mistakes become so outrageously destructive that they can’t be concealed any longer. (Whereas bad tax policy and bad transportation policy are often publicly apparent.)

Remember George Tenet’s “slam dunk” rationalization for invading Iraq? Did he “hit the ground running?” If so, I’m desperate for a different metaphor. I’m also desperate for a CIA cheif who reads breifing books and asks smart questions … and answers to the president.

Those who find the choice “puzzling” should consider the New York Times’s explanation for the appointment:

The choice of Mr. Panetta comes nearly two weeks after Mr. Obama had otherwise wrapped up his major personnel moves. It appears to reflect the difficulty Mr. Obama has encountered in finding a candidate who is capable of taking charge of the agency but is not tied to the interrogation and detention program run by the C.I.A. under President Bush.

Aides have said that Mr. Obama had originally hoped to select a C.I.A. director with extensive field experience, especially in combating terrorist networks. But his first choice for the job, John O. Brennan, had to withdraw his name amid criticism over his alleged role in the formation of the agency’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

In other words, all the “qualified” candidates for the job are so tainted by their willingness to go along with Bush’s idiotic torture policy that appointing any of them would only reinforce the idea that our intelligence officials care more about emulating Jack Bauer than about protecting this country. To make a break with our disgusting past — and restore public trust in the CIA — Obama had to pick someone outside the intelligence community. So they picked a former White House Cheif of Staff — which is a very serious job.

Here is how the Times describes Panetta’s background:

As President Clinton’s chief of staff for two and a half years, Mr. Panetta regularly attended daily intelligence briefings in the Oval Office, and he has a reputation in Washington as a skilled manager and power broker with a strong background in budget issues. But he has little direct intelligence experience, and did not serve on the House Intelligence Committee during his 16 years in Congress.

Screw the House Intelligence Committee, which has not served us well. Screw “direct intelligence experience,” which recent history proves is not what it’s cracked up to be.

Now is a moment when Democrats have to decide whether they want real change, or more of the same. And to coin a phrase from Stephen Colbert, Sen. Feinstein is on notice.

UPDATE: Here is some more about Sen. Feinstein:

Talking to reporters earlier on Tuesday, Feinstein had said that failing to seat Burris would call into question the validity of “gubernatorial appointments all over the country.”
…

Feinstein votes overwhelmingly with her party, but she has broken with her Democratic colleagues on some controversial issues. In 2007, she infuriated liberals back home by helping the GOP advance the nomination of Leslie Southwick for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. And she drew wrath again from the left when, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, she joined Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) in voting to confirm Michael Mukasey as attorney general despite his equivocations on whether waterboarding is torture.

With Obama in the White House and Democrats holding a big majority in the House, Republicans may need help from centrists such as Feinstein to stop Democratic legislation from moving through the Senate. Republicans say Feinstein is at the top of their list of potential Democratic defectors.

“She’ll take political heat to find common ground,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “I think she’ll be one of the key players in this Congress, quite frankly.”

….

On Tuesday, as Reid and other Democratic leaders were struggling to contain the spectacle of Burris’ arrival at the Capitol, Feinstein seemed to criticize the Illinois secretary of state for refusing to sign Burris’ appointment papers — and Senate Democrats for acting as if the lack of a signature actually mattered.

“I can’t imagine the secretary of state countermanding a gubernatorial appointment,” Feinstein said. “The question, really, is one, in my view, of law. And that is, does the governor have the power to make the appointment? And the answer is yes. Is the governor discredited? And the answer is yes.

“Does that affect his appointment power? And the answer is no, until certain things happen.”

Feinstein has communicated her views to Reid, who reminded Politico that Feinstein previously signed a letter saying that the Democratic Caucus would not seat anyone appointed by scandal-plagued Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Why would Feinstein sign a letter saying the Democratic Caucus wouldn’t seat a Blogojevich appointee, and then turn around and make ridiculous arguments for allowing a Blogojevich appointee to take his seat? Why would she say anything newsworthy and/or controversial about the absurb Blogojevich scandal when the Senate is about to begin work on saving the global economy, withdrawing from two wars, etc? And why did she vote to confirm Michael Mukasey?

There’s a simple explanation: Because she’s an incompetant longtime incumbent Senator who should be removed. I’d like to start sending money to a woman who can challenge her in the Democratic Senate Primary when it comes around again? Anybody know of someone to whom I should be sending my checks?

The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of United States president George W. Bush. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to aggressively secure itself from countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups, which was used to justify the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.^[1]

                            – from Wikipedia article: Bush Doctrine

Though both sides in the Middle East are intensely aware that this battle (in Gaza) will establish facts on the ground in the region for the new administration, Obama’s advisors have sent only vague signals, with David Axelrod on “Face the Nation” Sunday calling Israel a “great ally” and citing America’s “special relationship” with the Jewish state.

In a visit this summer to Israel, Obama did appear to give implicit approval to such a strike, saying that, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

                       – from Politico article: Israel lands on Obama’s front burner

There seems to be one set of rules for America and Israel, and another set of rules for India.

Let’s consider just three events: (1) the September 11th attacks, which were widely considered to be adequate justification for our invasion of Afghanistan, (2) rocket attacks on Israel, which are now considered adequate justification for Israel’s current military strikes on Gaza, and (3) the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which prompted India to do … almost nothing.  

Here is how the New York Times reported on India’s apparent reluctance to follow in the footsteps of the U.S. and Israel:

NEW DELHI — Though tensions have risen in the past few days, neither India’s governing coalition led by the Congress Party nor its habitually hawkish political opposition is advocating a military confrontation with Pakistan, the country’s neighbor and archrival.

Pakistan’s redeployment of troops late last week to its border with India, from its tribal areas in the northwest, raised fears. The troop movement came a month after the attacks in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, which India says were orchestrated by Pakistan-based militants.

Fear of a conflict in South Asia is unlikely to pass quickly, as Pakistan has resisted a broad crackdown on the militants India says were behind the Mumbai assault.

But for India, many here say, the cost is too high, not just because both sides have nuclear arms. As an Indian official put it, “Almost anything against Pakistan would be messy.”

The Mumbai attacks prompted bellicose outbursts from the Indian news media and led Indian officials to state that their “restraint” should not be mistaken for “weakness.” Yet even a surgical strike on terrorists’ training camps in Pakistan, one of the options floated in the immediate aftermath of the attack, would bring unwanted risks, according to policy makers and analysts.

They say it could damage India’s economic prospects at a time when the country is vulnerable to the global downturn.

Moreover, past military engagements with Pakistan strengthened the political influence of Pakistan’s Army and weakened its civilian government. Many in India say they are reluctant to do anything to undermine civilian rule there.

“The Pakistan military is itching for a fight,” said Lalit Mansingh, a retired Indian ambassador to the United States. “That will give them the excuse not to carry on the fight on Afghanistan.”

This time, he said, the Indian government is left with no choice but to mount a diplomatic offensive against Pakistan, in part by appealing to some of its most stalwart allies, like Saudi Arabia, China and the United States. “People realize war would be more costly in its impact,” Mr. Mansingh said.

I do not interpet India’s restraint as weakness — I’m no expert on these matters, but I can’t help thinking India is wise to avoid war. This restraint seems especially impressive, given that the Indian public seems hell-bent on demonizing their own political leadership for failing to prevent these attacks.

But their decision is still somewhat bewildering. If we accept that Americans and Israelis, in general, hate war and want to avoid war — then we must believe they went to war (America in Afghanistan and Israel in Gaze) only because it was absolutely necessary to protect their citizens. The purpose of these wars was to send a message that anyone who attacks America or Israel will face horrible consequences. 

So why isn’t it absolutely necessary for India to send that same message? Doesn’t India’s willingness to let Pakistan off the hook put its own citizens in danger? (Again — I support India’s decision to hold off — but I believe this question still needs to be answered.)

I am reminded of some news from early October, reported in another New York Times article, Senate Approves India Nuclear Treaty:

WASHINGTON — The United States opened a new chapter of cooperation with India on Wednesday night as Congress gave final approval to a breakthrough agreement permitting civilian nuclear trade between the countries for the first time in three decades.

The Senate ratified the deal 86 to 13 a week after the House passed it, handing a rare foreign policy victory to President Bush in the twilight of his administration and culminating a three-year debate that raised alarms about a new arms race and nearly toppled the government of India.

The agreement, in the view of its authors, will redefine relations between two countries often at odds during the cold war and build up India as a friendly counterweight to a rising China. But critics complain that it effectively scraps longstanding policies intended to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and that it could encourage nations like Pakistan, Iran and North Korea to accelerate their own programs outside international legal structures.

Under the terms of the deal, the United States will now be able to sell nuclear fuel, technology and reactors to India for peaceful energy use despite the fact that New Delhi tested bombs in 1974 and 1998 and never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In exchange, India agreed to open up 14 civilian nuclear facilities to international inspection, but could continue to shield eight military reactors from outside scrutiny.

“The national security and economic future of the United States will be enhanced by a strong and enduring partnership with India,” Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in the Senate debate on Wednesday.

Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, called the deal a “grievous mistake” that would reward rogue behavior. Mr. Dorgan and Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, tried to amend the agreement to explicitly require the United States to cut off nuclear trade if India conducted a new nuclear test. The agreement’s backers defeated the proposal, arguing that it was unnecessary and that nuclear trade would be halted in such a situation.

Mr. Bush has been pursuing the agreement since 2005, and his advisers have called closer relations between the United States and India a key part of his foreign policy legacy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, visiting Mr. Bush at the White House last week, endorsed that view. “When history is written,” he said, “I think it will be recorded that President George W. Bush made an historic goal in bringing our two democracies closer to each other.”

Is India showing restraint because that’s what the United States wants? Is India doing what the United States wants because the U.S. has taken steps to strengthen its alliance with India, in part by approving the treaty described above? In other words, is India basically risking its own security — and avoiding a “messy” war, for the good of all mankind — out of deference to us?

If so, we’d better make sure India doesn’t regret the decision. Apparently, Israel isn’t our only important ally on this planet, and it may be that India’s political leadership deserves our support.

(I am inspired to write this post after reading Lee’s thoughtful post below about the selection of Rick Warren to give the invocation at Obama’s inaugural.)

Remember back to the Democratic primaries, when Barack Obama was attacked by both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards for saying something non-hateful about Ronald Reagan? Here is what Obama said:

I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure.  I think part of what’s different are the times.  I do think that for example the 1980 was different.  I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.  He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.  I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.  I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

There’s no disputing the fundamental accuracy of Obama’s remarks above. By the time Reagan arrived on the national stage, many Americans felt — rightly or wrongly — that it was time to reject the Democratic Party, which had dominated American politics for decades.

But Obama wasn’t just offering up an analysis of Reagan’s presidency; Obama said what he said in order to indicate that he, too, wants to “change the trajectory of America” — but in a left-wing direction. And Obama believes the “times” are right for such a realignment, which will rebrand the Democratic party and set the stage for major progress on a whole host of issues, from health care, to taxes, to the environment, to foreign policy. These days, many Americans feel that it is time to reject the Republican Party, which has dominated American politics since Reagan.

Obama took an important step toward acheiving this goal when he selected Envangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural. Obama also indicated how he intends to achieve this change in trajectory — and his strategy isn’t pretty for many on the left. Obama intends to minimize the significance of “God, guns and gays,” in the tradition of 2004 presidential candidate and current party chairman Howard Dean.

Throughout this year’s presidential campaign, I heard pundits say over and over again that the Republican Party’s electoral success has been based on a “conservative coalition” — a coalition of social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and foreign policy conservatives — that came together in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s under the leadership of Ronald Reagan.

Now, for the first time in decades, this coalition is showing signs of fraying, creating an awesome opening for Democrats and liberals to reshape American politics.

One of the first Democratic leaders to seize upon this vulnerability of the conservative coalition was Dean, who said he was “tired of coming to the South and fighting elections on guns, God and gays. We’re going to fight this election on our turf, which is going to be jobs, education and health care.”

Chris Wallace asked Dean about those comments on Fox News Sunday in Dec. 2003:

WALLACE: What do you mean by that, when you say that you don’t want to talk about guns, God and gays?

DEAN: What the Republicans have been doing since 1968 was actually the subject of a speech I’m about to give in a couple of hours here in South Carolina, is dividing us along racial lines by talking about quotas, dividing us about abortion or guns or other issues like that.

Well, let me tell you something about South Carolina. There’s 102,000 children here with no health insurance. Most of those kids are white.

White people and black people in the South have a common interest. Their jobs are going offshore. They haven’t had a raise because health-insurance premiums have eaten up all their money. They need — $70 million was cut, got cut out of public health insurance — public education here, because the president’s economic program has been such a disaster.

Everybody deserves a break — not just in the South, but everybody else. And working people, no matter what color they are, need to vote together, because their economic interests are not served by the Republicans. And I think that’s why the election needs to be about health insurance, economic opportunity and jobs, and better educational opportunities for everybody.

WALLACE: Governor, I don’t think anybody would deny that those are very important issues, but why take the others — abortion, guns, God, gays — off the table? I mean, it sounds like you’re uncomfortable talking about values.

DEAN: I’m very comfortable talking about values, but we’re never going to agree on some of these issues. I actually have a more conservative positions on guns than many Democrats, although I do support the assault-weapons ban and background checks and all that. But…

WALLACE: But aren’t those legitimate issues, whether it’s a woman’s right to choose versus right to life, whether there should a national ban on assault weapons, gay rights?

I mean, aren’t those issues — I have to say, I remember back in 1988, because I was covering the campaign, when Michael Dukakis said that the campaign is about competence, not ideology, and the Republicans killed him on that.

Don’t American voters care about values?

DEAN: They care about values. And there are a lot of different kinds of values. My attitude is, each state’s going to make their own kinds of decisions about these difficult issues that we’re — you know, the social issues that divide us.

My question is, what we have in common is what we ought to look at. This president ran as a uniter, not a divider, and that was a complete falsehood. What he has done is use words like “quota” to send race-coded words to folks, talking about scaring them into thinking somebody from a minority community is going to take their jobs. On and on it goes.

What about what we have in common? What we have in common is we need better education for everybody. We need health care, health insurance for everybody. Every industrialized country in the world has health insurance except for us. We don’t have to have a complicated government-run system. But we ought to have it, like we do, for the most part, in Vermont, at least for all our kids.

So why can’t we talk about jobs, health care and education, which is what we all have in common, instead of allowing the Republicans to consistently divide us by talking about guns, God, gays, abortion and all this controversial social stuff that we’re not going to come to an agreement on?

I really believe that states ought to have a role. My gun policy basically is let’s keep the federal laws, let’s enforce them with great vigor, and then let’s let every state make additional laws if they want to. You’re going to have states that want gun control making more, and you’re going to have states like my state saying, look, we’ll enforce the federal laws and leave it at that.

Why can’t we take that kind of an approach to these issues and stop getting exercised about them? That’s what cost this election. Why can’t we look at what we have in common: economic opportunity, educational opportunity, health insurance? Those are the things that I think are value-driven.

And I think that’s where this administration falls short on values. They don’t seem to care about ordinary people. They’ll do everything for corporations. They give $26,000 in tax cuts to the top 1 percent. The rest of the people get $304 and a big property-tax increase, big health-insurance increases and big college-tuition increases.

That’s where I think that the battle about values is in this country and in this election.

Dean was basically proposing that the Democratic party target voters who are socially conservative but otherwise open to Democratic ideas. Dean wanted to draw those voters into a new “working majority” that would enable the country to make important progress on issues like education, health care, the environment, the wars, etc. Of course, drawing these voters in means not alienating them — which in turn means offending gays and others who want to fight these battles vigorously.

The continuing disintigration of the conservative coalition was evident during this year’s Republican primary, when it was clearly hard for voters to find a candidate who could rally all three legs of the stool. Candidates such as Mike Huckabee seemed to represent social conservatives who were willing to move to the center on fiscal issues. Candidates such as Rudy Guliani seemed to represent fiscal conservatives and foreign policy conservatives who were willing to move to the center on social issues. Ultimately, nominee John McCain — a foreign policy hawk and fiscal conservative — was saddled with the task of “reaching out” to social conservatives, who weren’t comfortable with his seeming ambivalence about their agenda.

In my view, the most appealing Republican candidate was Mike Huckabee, partly because he seemed like the least angry man in America, and partly because he seemed open-minded and moderate on foreign policy and economic issues. He seemed to represent the kind of conservatives that Dean thought he could reach in his 2003/2004 campaign. Consider this excerpt from a New York Times article about Huckabee’s appeal entitled “Huckabee Splits Young Evangelicals and Old Gaurd”:

WASHINGTON — Much of the national leadership of the Christian conservative movement has turned a cold shoulder to the Republican presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, wary of his populist approach to economic issues and his criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But that has only fired up Brett and Alex Harris.

The Harris brothers, 19-year-old evangelical authors and speakers who grew up steeped in the conservative Christian movement, are the creators of Huck’s Army, an online network that has connected 12,000 Huckabee campaign volunteers, including several hundred in Michigan, which votes Tuesday, and South Carolina, which votes Saturday.

They say they like Mr. Huckabee for the same reason many of their elders do not: “He reaches outside the normal Republican box,” Brett Harris said in an interview from his home near Portland, Ore.

The brothers fell for Mr. Huckabee last August when they saw him draw applause on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” for explaining that he believed in a Christian obligation to care for prenatal “life” and also education, health care, jobs and other aspects of “life.” “It is a new kind of evangelical conservative position,” Brett Harris said. Alex Harris added, “And we are not going to have to be embarrassed about him.”

Mr. Huckabee, who was a Southern Baptist minister before serving as governor of Arkansas, is the only candidate in the presidential race who identifies himself as an evangelical. But instead of uniting conservative Christians, his candidacy is threatening to drive a wedge into the movement, potentially dividing its best-known national leaders from part of their base and upending assumptions that have held the right wing together for the last 30 years.

His singular style — Christian traditionalism and the common-man populism of William Jennings Bryan, leavened by an affinity for bass guitar and late-night comedy shows — has energized many young and working-class evangelicals. Their support helped his shoestring campaign come from nowhere to win the Iowa Republican caucus and join the front-runners in Michigan, South Carolina and national polls.

And Mr. Huckabee has done it without the backing of, and even over the opposition of, the movement’s most visible leaders, many of whom have either criticized him or endorsed other candidates.

“Some of them have been openly hostile to him, and others merely lukewarm in their hostility,” said John Green, a scholar with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

If Mr. Huckabee can continue to galvanize evangelicals around his novel message while attracting other Republicans and perhaps independents, he will do more than advance his own campaign. He will also challenge the establishment of the Christian conservative political movement.

“To the extent that Governor Huckabee succeeds in advancing this new agenda that combines cultural conservatism with an economic and foreign affairs populism,” Mr. Green said, “it could undermine the existing Christian conservative political leaders and their organizations.”

In other words, Huckabee is a religious conservative (anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, etc.) but he isn’t afraid to use the frame of religion to prioritize government involvement in education, health care, jobs, etc. I remember his campaign pitch to improve the economy by spending heavily on infrastructure, and thought, “for a Republican, he’s not nearly as bad as he could be.” In a way, Huckabee’s strategy was based on the same ideas as Dean’s: that Republicans win on social issues, and Democrats win on everything else. So Huckabee figured he stay true to the social issues, move to the center on everything else, and remake the Republican Party.

Huckabee also seemed remarkably open to the sort of politics Obama was putting forward at that time. Consider this excerpt from a column by conservative pundit William Kristol immediately after the Iowa Caucus:

Who, inquiring minds want to know, is going to spare us a first Obama term? After all, for all his ability and charm, Barack Obama is still a liberal Democrat. Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration. We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.

For me, therefore, the most interesting moment in Saturday night’s Republican debate at St. Anselm College was when the candidates were asked what arguments they would make if they found themselves running against Obama in the general election.

The best answer came, not surprisingly, from the best Republican campaigner so far — Mike Huckabee. He began by calmly mentioning his and Obama’s contrasting views on issues from guns to life to same-sex marriage. This served to remind Republicans that these contrasts have been central to G.O.P. success over the last quarter-century, and to suggest that Huckabee could credibly and comfortably make the socially conservative case in an electorally advantageous way.

Huckabee went on to pay tribute to Obama for his ability “to touch at the core of something Americans want” in seeming to move beyond partisanship. And, he added, Senator Obama is “a likable person who has excited people about wanting to vote who have not voted in the past.” Huckabee was of course aware that in praising Obama he was recommending himself

I was watching the debate at the home of a savvy, moderately conservative New Hampshire Republican. It was at this moment that he turned to me and said: “You know, I’ve been a huge skeptic about Huckabee. I’m still not voting for him Tuesday. But I’ve got to say — I like him. And I wonder — could he be our strongest nominee?”

Alex Harris says “we are not going to have to be embarrassed about him.” The New Hampshire Republican says “I’ve got to say — I like him.” I think people like him for the same reason that I “liked him,” (although I would never vote for him) — he’s not angry, he’s a great communicator and he’s not running on the discredited ideas that have defined Republican ideas about the economy and foreign policy.

More from the New York Times article:

“Some of my Christian friends, just like some of my not-so-Christian friends, have become a little too Washingtonian,” said Rick Scarborough, an aspiring successor to the previous generation of conservative Christian leaders. He recently argued that his allies were wrong to balk at Mr. Huckabee’s turn toward environmentalism and “social justice.”

“Can you imagine Jesus ignoring the plight of the disenfranchised and downtrodden while going after the abortionist?” Mr Scarborough wrote on the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com.

Make no mistake: the “plight of the disenfanchised and downtrodden,” as a subject of public policy, is still owned by the Democratic Party, in the same way that lowering taxes is owned by the Republican Party. 

The libertarians and fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party hated Huckabee precisely because he and his ilk intended to introduce this sort of framework into Republican politics. The real ideological “base” of the Republican party — fiscal conservatives — want to privatize social security, get rid of the Department of Education, eliminate public education, criminalize unions, and take other steps that will weaken the “disenfranchised and downtrodden.” They will absolutely oppose taking the steps that are necessary to rescue the American economy, starting with a bailout of the auto industry.

There’s no doubt that Obama’s selection of Warren sends a message that “God, guns and gays” will not be at the top of Obama’s agenda. It also sends a message that Obama is trying follow through on Dean’s plan to lure social conservatives into a new Democratic coalition by targeting the sort of voters who were attracted to Huckabee – which means Obama will try to avoid alienating them, even if it means alienating gays.

Even Kristol had to acknowledge the significance of Obama’s gesture, and also conveyed a sense of the alienation social conservatives feel when attacked for their views:

The assault on Prop 8 supporters has been extraordinary in its mean-spiritedness and extremism–but the left knows what it’s doing. The purpose has been to intimidate people with an opposing point of view from defending their position. To be against same-sex marriage, even against the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage, is to be a bigot. As one leftwinger said on CNN, Warren is a “hatemonger” comparable to “the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.” Or, as the Human Rights Campaign’s Brad Luna told Byron York of National Review, dismissing the fact that the benediction will be delivered by the Reverend Joseph Lowery, who is more friendly to gay marriage: “I don’t think any Jewish Americans would feel much comfort in knowing that an anti-Semite is starting the inauguration with an invocation, but we’re going to end it with a rabbi.” So the claim is, opposing same-sex marriage is tantamount to being a racist or an anti-Semite.

Making that charge is at the heart of the agenda of the gay lobby. They don’t want to debate same-sex marriage. They want to demonize its opponents. Ironically, Lowery himself, who is a (somewhat equivocal) supporter of gay marriage, refuses to equate the gay rights and the civil rights movements: “Homosexuals as a people have never been enslaved because of their sexual orientation,” he told the Associated Press. “They may have been scorned; they may have been discriminated against. But they’ve never been enslaved and declared less than human.”

And, one could add, gender and sex are at least potentially morally relevant in a way a decent society will not allow skin color to be. Skin color is skin deep. Gender and sex are more complicated, which is why even in our “enlightened” age, all distinctions based on gender and sexual orientation haven’t collapsed.

God knows, Obama isn’t going to be out there defending such distinctions, or explaining which are reasonable and which aren’t. And it’s certain Obama is going to govern as a pro-abortion rights, not-particularly-pro-traditional-family, social liberal. But he at least seems open to a discussion of these issues. And that leaves some political space for social conservatives to continue making their case over the next few years.

Conservatives have to be ready to stand up for themselves–and for each other–if and when the left comes at them from the academy, Hollywood, and the media. Obama’s invitation to Rick Warren doesn’t mean his administration won’t put a heavy thumb on the left side of the scale in our cultural conflicts. It doesn’t even mean that organs of the federal government, over which Obama will of course be presiding, won’t try to stifle nonconforming opinions. But the Warren invitation means that one can at least appeal to Obama’s own precedent against suppressing out-of-favor views.

The left senses that the invitation to Rick Warren is a blow to their effort to establish a soft tyranny of “correct” opinion, to enforce society-wide political orthodoxy, on social issues. They’re right. This isn’t the time for conservatives to snipe at Obama’s motives. It’s time to welcome him into the American mainstream, to salute the president-elect’s progress from Reverends Wright to Warren.

So now those of us on the left who find Rick Warren’t views offensive have to do a cost/benefit analysis. The Dean/Obama strategy has costs and benefits: the costs are that the Democratic Party can’t be too aggressive in its tactics or its rhetoric in fighting for issues such as gay marriage, abortion rights, or gun control. The benefits are that the Democratic Party may win over a good chunk of socially conservative voters, giving Democrats an opportunity to govern this country for the foreseable future in ways that will be great for our economy, our foreign policy and our long term viability as a planet.

Is it worth it?

UPDATE: After writing the blog below, I read the following New York Times article, which shows the shoe thrower’s inpact on Iraqi history is intensifying:

BAGHDAD — A session of the Iraqi Parliament erupted in an uproar on Wednesday as lawmakers clashed over how to respond to the continuing detention of an Iraqi television reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush during a Baghdad news conference earlier this week, people attending the parliamentary meeting said.

As Parliament began to discuss legislation on the withdrawal from Iraq of armed forces from nations other than the United States, a group of lawmakers demanded that the legislature instead take up the issue of the detained journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, 29. After his shoes narrowly missed Mr. Bush’s head at the news conference on Sunday, Mr. Zaidi was subdued by a fellow journalist and then beaten by members of the prime minister’s security detail.

The legislative session became so tumultuous that it prompted the speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, to announce his resignation, according to The Associated Press. A spokesman for Mr. Mashhadani, Jabar al-Mashhadani, refused to confirm whether the speaker had tendered his resignation, although he would not deny it. Some in Parliament say the government should release Mr. Zaidi immediately, while others say the judiciary should decide his fate.

How badly injured Mr. Zaidi was by members of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s security detail is not clear. He has not appeared in public since his arrest, and his family members and his legal representatives say they have not been permitted to visit him. On Wednesday, Mr. Zaidi was scheduled to appear before a judge, but it was unclear whether that happened.

Dhiya al-Saadi, one of Mr. Zaidi’s lawyers, said Wednesday that he was not sure whether Mr. Zaidi had appeared before a judge. As part of the Iraqi legal system, a judge typically determines whether bringing formal charges against a suspect is warranted, criminal lawyers in Iraq said. Mr. Zaidi faces up to seven years in prison if he is charged with and convicted of offending the head of a foreign state.

The New York Times says Iraqi “journalist” Muntader al-Zaidi, 29, has become a “folk hero,” ever since he threw two shoes at President Bush during a press conference Sunday evening.

I put the word “journalist” in quotes not because I know anything about his work or career — but only because he ceased to be a journalist when he threw his shoes at the president. Throwing shoes at press conferences is not what journalists are supposed to be doing. His anger may have been more than reasonable, more than justified, but that doesn’t excuse his behavior. 

I believe he should be fired.

A reasonable question is: Should he be jailed? On the one hand, it seems silly to put a man in prison for throwing his shoes, an act which doesn’t seem to rise to the level of assault. On the other hand, it’s easy to understand why any government would make it illegal to throw a solid object at a foreign head of state during an official visit. In my humble opinon, I think it would be unreasonable for this man to spend more than a few months in jail — but that’s for an Iraqi court to decide.

He should not be beaten, however. But that may be what happened to the man, according to the several news outlets, including Reuters:

Zaidi’s brother said Tuesday he was hit in the head with a rifle butt and had an arm broken in the chaos that broke out after he threw his shoes at Bush and was leapt on by Iraqi security officers and U.S. secret service agents.

He was in a hospital in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, his brother Maitham al-Zaidi said.

“All that we know is we were contacted yesterday by a person — we know him — and he told us that Muntazer was taken on Sunday to Ibn-Sina hospital,” Maitham al-Zaidi said. “He was wounded in the head because he was hit by a rifle butt, and one of his arms was broken.”

The brother declined to identify the source of the information and his comments could not be independently verified. Asked about the brother’s remarks, various Iraqi officials denied having responsibility for the case.

Al Jazeera actually quoted Zaidi’s brother saying he was “tortured.”

An Iraqi journalist arrested after throwing his shoes at the US president has been tortured during his detention, his brother has said. 

Muntazer al-Zaidi, who called  George Bush ”a dog” during his attack, was beaten by security guards after his arrest, Durgham al-Zaidi told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

“We know that [Muntazer] has been tortured and his hand was broken. I asked them to go and check on him in the Green Zone [in Baghdad],” he said.

Al-Baghdadia television, Muntazer’s employer, reported that al-Zaidi had been “seriously injured” while in custody.

The channel has urged the Iraqi government to allow lawyers and the Iraqi Red Crescent to visit him.

The Iraqi military has denied that al-Zaidi has been mistreated while in detention.

The New York Times indicates there seems to be no reliable way to determine what happened:

Ziad al-Ajeely, president of the Iraqi Journalistic Freedom Observatory, said he had contacted senior members of the Iraqi government after he heard rumors that Mr. Zaidi had suffered severe injuries. But, he said, “they assured me he was fine.”

Under the circumstances, it is possible to believe that Zaidi hadn’t been “tortured” in detention, but had been injured unintentionally by security personnel who were overly-zealous in their efforts to subdue him after the shocking shoe-throwing incident. Of course, it is also possible that he was deliberately beaten by security forces.

Either way, the idea that he was beaten, tortured, abused, etc., will only make his example more powerful — and while his actions may have provided plenty of fodder for late night comedy talk show hosts, they’re also a symbol around which Iraq’s most virulent anti-American elements may rally.

Al Jazeera reports:

Al-Zaidi’s attack on Bush, who ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, has been met with broad support across the Arab world.

Iraqis calling for al-Zaidi’s release from custody held a second day of protests on Tuesday, with hundreds of students marching in Baghdad.

The demonstrations came a day after thousands of people turned out in Baghdad’s Sadr City in a show of support for al-Zaidi.

But the Iraqi government on Monday called al-Zaidi’s outburst against Bush a “barbaric and ignominious act”.

President Bush should privately apologize to the Iraqi government for embaressing it with his presence. Zaidi’s actions — and the support they inspired throughout the Arab world — may have provided angry Arabs with a relatively harmless way to achieve catharsis, just as a new American president with an Arab middle name takes Bush’s place. But the idea that Zaidi was beaten provides more than catharsis — it provides a new rationale for violence against the powers that be in Iraq.