History is Happening Now

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.

The Democratic Party has a problem: Barack Obama wants bipartisanship, and Nancy Pelosi doesn’t.

Here is Nancy Pelosi suggesting the media and the public are making too big of a deal out of the Democrats’ failure to win substantial votes from both parties in support of a $800-billion-or-so economic stimulus bill:

“Washington seems consumed in the process argument of bipartisanship, when the rest of the country says they need this bill,” the California Democrat said, seeming to sweep aside the Obama administration initial desire to have broad GOP support for the plan. …

Pelosi’s increasingly partisan tone comes a day after Obama stepped up his pressure on Republicans, who have sought to downsize spending and increase tax cuts. They have been joined in their efforts by a coalition of centrist Democrats in the upper chamber, led by Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, who has criticized the House stimulus as wasteful and ill-targeted.

Unfortunately, Pelosi apparently isn’t up on the latest news. The “rest of the country” is NOT saying we need this bill. Here’s this from a recent CBS news report:

Slightly more than half the country approves of President Obama’s $800 billion-plus stimulus package, a new CBS News poll finds. But support for the bill has fallen 12 points since January, and nearly half of those surveyed do not believe it will shorten the recession.

Fifty-one percent of those surveyed support the stimulus package, while 39 percent do not. An additional 10 percent don’t know. Last month, 63 percent supported the package and just 24 percent opposed it.

I think it’s safe to assume that the 39 percent of Americans who oppose this bill aren’t all from Washington, and they aren’t opposed because they are all “consumed in the process argument of bipartisanship.” Many of these folks just don’t trust Nancy Pelosi, who set the stage for this entire debate over the stimulus bill when she and other top House Democrats drafted the first version that passed the House. Consider this from the CBS News Report:

President Obama’s approval rating stands at 62 percent, while the overall approval rating of Congress is 26 percent. …

The approval rating for Congressional Democrats is 48 percent, while the approval rating for Congressional Republicans is 32 percent. Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is unknown to most Americans, but she gets a 3-to-1 negative rating from those familiar with her.

Obama’s approval rating is a full 14 points higher than his fellow Democrats in Congress. We can blame the right-wing spin machine all day long for the unpopularity of Pelosi and her colleagues, but let’s not make the mistake of seeing value in their unpopularity. It’s not an asset, it’s a liability.

Republicans made it clear at the outset that the first draft of this bill was a product of Pelosi’s leadership — and Democrats could never effectively refute this charge because (guess what) it’s true! – at least according to conservative Democrats, also known as “Blue Dog” Democrats.

Many of the 49 members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition are going public with deep misgivings about the goodie-packed $819 billion stimulus package the House passed last week.

That’s hardly surprising, considering it’s a deficit-spending behemoth that inherently offends their balanced-budget sensibilities. But the Dogs are really growling about the way in which the bill passed the House — how Pelosi shepherded it through, and how she suspended “regular order” during the passage of the $700 billion financial markets bailout late last year.

“A lot of the Blue Dogs were unhappy with the [stimulus] bill and even angrier because they felt they had zero input — like their caucus doesn’t matter anymore because of the padded majority,” said a staffer for a prominent caucus member.

“I got in terrible trouble with our leadership because they don’t care what’s in the bill; they just want it to pass and they want it to be unanimous,” Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper, the member deepest in Pelosi’s doghouse, told a Nashville radio program over the weekend.

“We’re just told how to vote. We’re treated like mushrooms most of the time.”

Why does Obama remain so popular? It has a lot to do with the fact that people believe Obama is sincere when he talks about bipartisanship.

Americans believe the president is following through on his promise to establish greater bipartisanship in Washington: The public overwhelmingly thinks Obama is reaching out to Congressional Republicans, with 81 percent saying he is doing so.

Americans do not believe that Congressional Democrats and Republicans are following suit, however: Only 49 percent believe that Congressional Democrats are striving for bipartisanship, and just 41 percent say Congressional Republicans are seeking bipartisanship.

It is simply astonishing that 81 percent of respondants to this poll give Obama credit for reaching out to Congressional Republicans — this means that a majority or near-majority of Republicans believe Obama is reaching out. In contrast, it’s likely that the overwhelming majority of people who believe Congressional Democrats are reaching out are themselves Democrats.

It isn’t just Washington that’s “consumed” by the idea of bipartisanship. It’s also Barack Obama and the American people. Consider the following from a recent CBS news report:

Eighty-one percent of Americans say the stimulus bill should be a bipartisan effort. Just 13 percent think it is okay for a bill to be passed with only the backing of the Democratic majority.

Eighty-one percent is a huge number. It obviously represents a large number of Republicans AND Democrats, and this polling data may explain how Barack Obama managed to win. That’s what Charlie Cook — probably the smartest non-partisan pollster in the country – points to in a recent column:

In a recent article for The Democratic Strategist, a Web-based publication that provides a forum for some of the smartest Democratic pollsters, theorists, and thinkers, Andrew Levison argues that the strength of Obama’s appeal last year was in his determination to build a large and durable coalition, not to merely win with a very narrow majority. This strategy was crafted to bring about significant social reforms and change; it is not an abandonment of progressive values but instead a more effective way of achieving those objectives. To make real change, you have to try to do big things with broad-based support. History shows that the biggest and most meaningful public policy changes of the last century were achieved through bipartisan efforts, not by one party muscling its agenda through.

Most left-wing activists hate bipartisanship because they hate conceding anything to Republicans. I know how they feel — it’s frustrating to share a country with people who don’t share your beliefs about what should be done — but overall, the American people love bipartisanship. Left-wing activists may be deluding themselves that if they can just grab the reins of power for a brief period, they can implement policy changes that the rest of America will have to accept — even if a majority of Americans don’t actually support these changes. But this is called overreaching — it is precisely the political mistake the Republicans made during the Bush years, and Democrats who follow in Bush’s footsteps will face the same fate.

As Cook writes:

Congressional Democrats are understandably anxious to put into place those programs and priorities that got nowhere while Democrats chafed under Republican rule. Expecting them to take naturally to this very different approach by Obama is unrealistic. For that very reason, the Obama White House must begin sending in the plays, or it risks having Hill quarterbacks call their own in ways that run counter to the president’s game plan and have much less likelihood of success.

The “Hill quarterbacks” to be wary of are Pelosi and other House Dems who originally drafted this stimulus bill. The first draft of this bill ran counter to the president’s game plan because it was too full of random items that couldn’t be sold in a coherent way to a right-wing public. As Cook put it,

But the House-passed package suggested an effort exclusively of, by, and for Democrats, and it played to some of the worst stereotypes of the Democratic Party and of politics as usual on Capitol Hill. It implied that Obama had become a captive of, rather than the victor over, old-style politics.

Those who think it’s weak-minded and ignorant for me to repeat the “talking points” of conservatives who say this bill could have been drafted differently, consider the following discussion during Slate’s Political Gabfest, which features Slate writers Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson and David Plotz:

Dickerson: … A lot of people think that Daschle, plus the fact that the stimulus bill is now having some trouble, there are Democrats who are saying they won’t vote for it until it’s fixed, and as it starts to get fixed, that’s causing House Democrats to get angry about the things that are being taken out. I was talking to somebody who was, to an aide to a House leader yesterday, who said that the Senate Democrats were merely “mouthing GOP talking points.” That’s kind of a rough thing to say about your fellow Democrat already in this era of hope and wonder. I mean, we’re only in our second week of the Obama Administration and you already have intra-party sniping. So there is, some, kind of, the sky is falling. My own view, basically is, if you were one of the people who panicked during the election, and said, “oh my God, the sky is falling, Barack Obama is not going to win because he’s not tough enough, he’s too cerebral, he doesn’t act quickly enough, too much the law professor, blah blah blah, that you then can’t now panic about Republicans having the upper hand in the stimulus conversation …

Plotz: … Frankly, as we discussed a bit last week, there is stuff in that bill which is kind of hard to justify as a short-term economic measure. You don’t have to use this bill to do every single thing that the Democrats want to do over the next four years, or in the next two years. The bill can be more limited, and I think that it’s perfectly fair to have this kind of deliberation. …

Bazelon: … I have to say that now that I actually understand what is in that bill and all the different moving parts to it and how creaky it is, I don’t think that the version that Obama proposed should just pass.

Dickerson: Well, to be fair to him. It wasn’t the bill he proposed. It was the roughly 700-page bill that the House put together.

Are Bazelon and Plotz “mouthing GOP talking points” when they say the bill is “creaky” and contains elements that are “hard to justify”? I don’t have time to provide their credentials — but I’ve listened to them long enough to know that they have absolutely no inclination to echo Republican spin.

Pelosi and House Dems who thought Barack Obama’s talk of bipartisanship was “just words” need to realize that Obama was being serious — and furthermore, his approach to governance will do more for this country in the long-term than theirs will.

Now is the time for Democrats to abandon any effort to pass their $800-billion-plus economic stimulus bill in a “bipartisan” manner. The Republicans have officially decided they can be obstructionist without paying a political price — and now the Democrats must make sure they do pay a price.

I’ve written blog posts celebrating Obama’s attempts at bipartisanship, and I’ve written blogs criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for drafting the bill’s first draft in a way that gave Republicans easy excuses to oppose it. But there is no excuse for the attitude the conservative elites are taking toward this process. 

To be specific, Republicans have apparently abandoned any hopes of using their power in Congress to do what is best for this country, and have decided instead to do what is best for their party. 

Consider this latest advice from Bill Kristol:

“This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending — it’s a strategy for America’s long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education.”

With this key sentence from his op-ed in the Washington Post today, President Obama has given Republicans a golden opportunity: Insist on splitting the legislation being debated on the Senate floor into a true short-term stimulus, which can pass quickly, and long-term policy proposals, which require serious debate.

Republicans should stop trying to improve the unimproveable with small-bore amendments to the current legislative package. Instead, they can point out that Obama is supporting under the guise of emergency legislation a bloated catch-all of stimulus, pork and (often bad) policy. They can make clear that Republicans will support a real short-term stimulus (pro-growth tax cuts, housing measures and a few targeted spending provisions unemployment and COBRA extensions) that meets Larry Summers’s criteria of being targeted, timely and temporary. They should introduce such a measure as a substitute — “The Emergency Economic Growth Bill of 2009” — and trumpet their vigorous support of it. And they should insist that all the “energy, health care and education” proposals be debated in an orderly and serious way in the regular legislative process — not jammed through as part of an emergency “stimulus.”

This strategy depends on GOP willingness to slow the process down and to challenge Obama’s arbitrary Presidents’ Day deadline. The Republican position should be: We’ll pass on this emergency timetable a real stripped-down emergency stimulus. But if Obama insists on legislation incorporating an alleged “strategy for America’s long-term growth,” then the country deserves hearings and debate that obviously will take some time. And Republicans should make clear they cannot agree to limiting debate to a couple of days on such momentous long-term legislation.

In other words: If Obama wants a stimulus, Republicans will give it to him tomorrow. It’s the president’s and the Democrats’ insistence on incorporating a huge and problematic policy agenda in this one bill that’s delaying action. Why then, Republicans can ask, is President Obama delaying a necessary, short-term, emergency growth package?

Kristol may be a top-tier spokesperson for stupid ideas, but Kristol isn’t stupid. He knows the Democrats have heavy majorities in Congress, and no “Emergency Economic Growth Bill of 2009″ is every going to pass in a million years. To abandon “small-bore amendments” and instead “insist” and “make clear they cannot agree to limiting debate” — which means filabustering — and trumpet their support for proposals that will never pass — this is a strategy to exploit our national economic crisis to score political points for the Republican Party. 

If Republicans decide they cannot, in good conscience, vote for the current bill, I can respect their decision. 

But Kristol’s proposed filabustering will prevent any bill from being passed — which will lead the American people to believe that Congress is incapable of taking action to rescue our economy. Confidence in our government will drop, and so will stock prices and consumer confidence. Kristol’s proposal to launch alternative legislation will merely provide an excuse for Republicans in Congress to abandon any effort to work with Democrats. Kristol named the column above “The Republicans Opportunity,” because he sees an opportunity to redefine the Republican Party around its opposition to the Democratic bill. What his ideas will mean for the country is beside the point, as far as Kristol is concerned. 

Here’s another example of the new conservative proposal, this one put forward by Daniel Henninger, to lift up the Republican Party on the back of the American economy:

Contrary to conventional Beltway wisdom, the House Republicans’ zero votes for the Obama presidency’s stimulus “package” is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the GOP’s political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties. If the GOP line holds, the party could win back much of the goodwill it dissipated with its big-government adventures the past eight years.

For starters, notwithstanding the new president’s high approval rating, his stimulus bill (ghost-written by Nancy Pelosi) has been losing altitude with public opinion by the day. People are nervous. …

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says, “Everybody agrees that there ought to be a stimulus package. The question is: How big and what do we spend it on?”

Sen. McConnell should reconsider. He knows that the Bush-GOP spending spree cost them control of Congress in 2006. Thus, “How big?” is not the question his party’s constituents (or horrified independents) want answered. This is a chance for the GOP to climb down from its big-government dunce chair. Until that reversal is achieved, there is no hope for this party.

I think that behind the bill’s sinking public support is the sense that it won’t work and its cost is dangerous. The bill’s design, an embarrassment to Rube Goldberg, is flawed. Even were one to grant the Keynesians their argument, this is a very mushy, weak-form stimulus.

Rather than try to “reform” it, which won’t happen, Sen. McConnell should ask President Obama to pull it and start over. One guesses that privately the president’s economic team would thank the senator. If he won’t pull it, the Senate Republicans should walk away from it. This bill is a bomb. It may wreck more than it saves.

Henninger isn’t stupid either. Pulling this bill and starting over is NOT an option. Henninger knows full well that he’s really advocating for Republicans to try to score political points by opposing this bill with all their heart and soul. Responsible legislators would concern themselves with how this approach is liable to play itself out for the American people, but the only endgame Henninger cares about is restoring the Republican Party’s popularity. 

I had hoped that Obama and the Democrats could get bipartisan support for this bill — because I think that’s best for the economy, best for the country and best for the Democratic Party and Obama — but that time has certainly passed. 

The only way to get bipartisan support for a bill championed by Democrats is to put Republicans in a position where it’s in their best interests politically to support it. My hope was the Democrats would draft a bill that would either force Republicans to defend their core ideology — which is simply indefensible — or support the bill. But Republicans have found a way out: Instead of justifying their opposition to the stimulus bill in terms of their blind support for tax cuts for the wealthy, they have relied instead on a series of lists. By picking out a few dozen miniscule items in the bill, rattling them off in a list, and adopting a snarky tone (see here for another excellent example), the right-wingers have managed to sow doubt in the public’s mind about whether the bill is a waste. 

Now Obama and the Democrats have to switch gears, and fast. Republicans want an opportunity to filabuster, and Democrats need to give them that opportunity. Obama and the Dems need to bring this bill up for a vote — fast! If Republicans want to filabuster and obstruct, they should be given the opportunity. And Pelosi, Harry Reid and Obama need to say it plain: This is the bill, and we will either pass it now or pass it later, but there will be no other opportunity to pass a plan. The Democrats won, and this is the bill on the table, so take it or leave it.

If Democrats want to pass a $800-billion-plus emergency fiscal stimulus bill to rescue our ailing economy, the Dems in the House should have put together a bill that their own caucus could support unanimously and with enthusiasm.

Instead, they put together a bill that can be easily opposed by not just Republicans, but by more than a few Democrats as well. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska has objected to the House version of the bill — and so do a lot of House Democrats, above and beyond the 11 House Dems who didn’t vote for the bill when it passed the House.

The end result of this legislative failure is that as House Republicans win the media war over what this stimulus bill is and whether it will work, House and Senate Democrats are finding it ever-more difficult to stand behind it. This will ultimately force Obama and the Congressional Democratic leadership to make concessions far above and beyond what they would have had to accept if Nancy Pelosi had been thoughtful in designing this bill in the first place.

Consider this excerpt from a Politico article:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has never enjoyed a firmer hold on the leash of her 255-member caucus — but the Blue Dogs are starting to strain against the chain.

Many of the 49 members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition are going public with deep misgivings about the goodie-packed $819 billion stimulus package the House passed last week.

That’s hardly surprising, considering it’s a deficit-spending behemoth that inherently offends their balanced-budget sensibilities. But the Dogs are really growling about the way in which the bill passed the House — how Pelosi shepherded it through, and how she suspended “regular order” during the passage of the $700 billion financial markets bailout late last year.

“A lot of the Blue Dogs were unhappy with the [stimulus] bill and even angrier because they felt they had zero input — like their caucus doesn’t matter anymore because of the padded majority,” said a staffer for a prominent caucus member.

“I got in terrible trouble with our leadership because they don’t care what’s in the bill; they just want it to pass and they want it to be unanimous,” Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper, the member deepest in Pelosi’s doghouse, told a Nashville radio program over the weekend.

“We’re just told how to vote. We’re treated like mushrooms most of the time.”

None of this is lost on Pelosi, a microscopic observer of intra-caucus politics — although it’s not clear if she’ll do anything to appease the group.

Pelosi confidant George Miller (D-Calif.) said Democratic leaders are “definitely paying attention” to the Blue Dogs’ concerns. But at her weekly press conference Wednesday, Pelosi made light of a reporter who tried to ask her about the topic.

“Speaking of the Blue Dogs,” the reporter began.

“Were we speaking about them?” Pelosi asked, before asserting that “a bill … will pass the House” no matter who opposed it. 

In the past, the Dogs have barked more than bitten. But they could gain major leverage if Republicans continue to unanimously oppose the stimulus — and Pelosi needs every Democratic vote to pass the House-Senate compromise bill.  

The bill will probably end up passing, but it is deeply troubling to see a situation where Pelosi cannot forge consensus on an issue of this magnitude within her own caucus. If Pelosi didn’t clear this bill with moderate House Democrats, what is the likelihood that she cleared it with any Republicans? It seems far more likely that she and a few other top Dems drafted this bill on their own, utterly abandoning not only Obama’s calls for bipartisanship, but any semblance of common sense about how to build the Democrats’ poltical capital.

From another article:

Democrats expressed frustration that the media and the Republicans are focusing on “minor” items, some of which are no longer in the bill, such as measures dealing with smoking cessation and STD prevention.

“The sum total of their grievances amount to one page,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, ripping a page from the 735-page bill.

How did smoking cessation and STD prevention get into the bill in the first place? They got there because Nancy Pelosi put them there. These provisions won’t end up in the bill — they won’t prevent a single disease or unwanted pregnancy — but they will provide Republicans with embaressing talking points that will offend swing voters in the very districts where more moderate Democrats face serious G.O.P. challengers.

This could have been avoided — and then, later on, the Dems could have passed spending items dealing with smoking cessation and STD prevention separately. Their presence in this stimulus bill gives Republicans an opportunity to oppose these worthwhile measures in terms of process — they may be good ideas, Republicans say, but they don’t belong in emergency legislation designed to rescue the economy.

It’s time for Democrats to start acknowledging that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama have two very different ideas about governance — and Pelosi’s ideas aren’t working.

Thankfully, it appears Obama is finding ways to introduce some common sense:

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — As whispers of tension between the White House and congressional Democrats cloud negotiations over the stimulus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reassured her rank and file Thursday that they remain President Barack Obama’s “most enthusiastic supporters.”

“We have his back,” Pelosi told a roomful of Democrats at the party’s annual retreat at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa, according to people in the room.

The speaker also pledged “to work in a bipartisan way” before complaining that Republican ideas “take us in the wrong direction.”

Her remarks won loud applause from the assembled lawmakers, according to one participant.

As negotiations on the nearly $900 billion stimulus intensify in the Senate, Pelosi has had to fight back reports that Obama administration officials had tacitly encouraged dissent from moderate Blue Dog Democrats. Many of these fiscally conservative Democrats have pushed back on the size and scope of the stimulus, and Obama has been open about trimming back Pelosi’s version of the bill.

In her remarks to the Democratic retreat, Pelosi also promised her caucus that she would restore regular order to the House by bringing legislation through committees — something Democrats often ignored during their first two years in power. She explained that party leaders decided to expedite consideration of the stimulus package because the economy is “losing jobs at a massive rate.”