Where is the evidence of the supposed partisan wrangling that we hear so much about? Just examine the question dispassionately. Look at every major Bush initiative, every controversial signature Bush policy over the last eight years, and one finds virtually nothing but massive bipartisan support for them — the Patriot Act (original enactment and its renewal); the invasion of Afghanistan; the attack on, and ongoing occupation of, Iraq; the Military Commissions Act (authorizing enhanced interrogation techniques, abolishing habeas corpus, and immunizing war criminals); expansions of warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity; declaring part of Iran’s government to be “terrorists”; our one-sided policy toward Israel; the $700 billion bailout; The No Child Left Behind Act, “bankruptcy reform,” and on and on.
Most of those were all enacted with virtually unanimous GOP support and substantial, sometimes overwhelming, Democratic support: the very definition of “bipartisanship.” That’s just a fact.
Moreover, Bush’s appointments of judges were barely ever impeded, resulting in a radical transformation of the federal courts. Other than John Bolton and Steven Bradbury, not a single significant Bush nominee was blocked. Those who implemented Bush’s NSA program (Michael Hayden) and authorized his torture program (Alberto Gonzales) were confirmed for promotions. The Bush administration committed war crimes, broke long-standing surveillance laws, politicized prosecutions, and explicitly claimed the right to break our laws, yet Congress did nothing about any of that except to authorize most of it, and investigated virtually none of it. With regard to many of those transgressions, key Democratic leaders were briefed at the time they were implemented and quietly acquiesced, did nothing to stop any of it. Both parties are in virtually unanimous agreement that our highest political leaders should be exempt from accountability under the rule of law even for the grave crimes that have been committed.
As The Washington Post‘s Dan Froomkin observed at the end of last year: “Historians looking back on the Bush presidency may well wonder if Congress actually existed.” How much more harmonious – “bipartisan” – can the two parties get?
Category: Barack Obama
John Dickerson of Slate magazine wrote a moving piece yesterday exploring Barack Obama’s brief return to normalcy before he enters the White House. He takes a number of Obama’s comments from his 60 Minutes interview with Michelle – comments that struck me at the time – and develops this sense of melancholy they conveyed.
What made the piece moving was how Dickerson was able to relate his constantly hectic life as a political reporter covering the campaigns for the past two years with Obama’s life making the news – and how both are now suddenly returned to their everyday lives – their families who they neglected and sorely missed, their homes, their mundane routines that now seem to wonderful – washing dishes!
A symptom of the campaign bends is the temporary view that even the life’s most mundane tasks are magical. Why? Because they are discrete, yield results, and require manual labor: characteristics not associated with most campaign duties…
Any professional who has been on the road for a long period of time can identify with the drift away from a normal life. Your cooking skills are replaced by room-service-ordering skills. Gradually, you forget which floor your office is on or whether you take a left or a right turn from home to get to church. A presidential candidate experiences this bubble-wrapped life completely. He lives in a world where his meals, movements, and laundry are all taken care of for him. This is necessary so that he can focus on NAFTA and Afghanistan. If he makes a wrong turn, there is a hand to direct him gently down the correct hallway.
This highly artificial life makes a body starve for the reality it used to know. It was clear that Obama was sensitive to the simple pleasures of returning to his home environment when he described hearing his wife move around the house when she wakes up before him. He’d been away from it so long, it probably rang like thunder.
[digg-reddit-me]Think calmly and well, upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you, in hot haste, to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it.
From Abraham Lincoln’s first Inagural Address. Brought to mind by George Packer’s invocation of it in his excellent piece in the New Yorker on “The New Liberalism.”
In a time of crisis, sometimes, much can be lost in the time required for due reflection. But not often. And much more often, hasty decisions lead to unanticipated side effects, often worsening the original condition. Our current media environment punishes daily the patience Lincoln counsels – and rewards the patience, if ever, only on occasion. This has been the case at least since Bill Clinton, as every prominent political figure is forced to respond to scandal after scandal – and in the midst of this, the bigger picture was lost. John McCain’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaign got lost amidst their daily attempt to win the media war and quash brewing scandals. Barack Obama managed to stand apart from the daily grind. He kept his campaign’s course amidst the tumult. This wasn’t always to his benefit – as it led him to take too long to address the Reverend Wright scandal for example- but in the end, his response worked more effectively than a day-to-day attempt to distract and quash the story would have.
This patience and deliberation is Obama’s strength. Now, he must maintain it while he manages his transition and in his administration.
I’ve been hearing that the Detroit bailout won’t be able to pass in this lame duck session of Congress. I hope this is true – because I think a smart rescue plan for Detroit will work better than the current proposal for a hasty bailout. We need to ensure that this bill doesn’t succeed just because – as George Will pointed out – it follows “the supreme law of the land…the principle of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs.”
Yet at the same time, I am not quite as cavalier as many others who have suggested we let these companies simply fail. It may be just – but it is not prudent in this financial climate. In a just world, certainly, Lehman Brothers would have failed – but if it were prudently preserved, this financial crisis may not have been precipitated. Can we risk letting these companies fail now? I don’t believe we can, so we need some kind of rescue plan.
But this rescue plan should be crafted to avoid the exact moral hazard that accompanies any help to an ailing industry. The plan should be punitive towards the management of these companies. It should not prop up the companies directly. My thought is that Obama could propose some Tennessee Valley Authority type project for Detroit – in which the government could offer contracts for green industry jobs in the area – specifically attempting to utilize many of the structures and factories and workers in the area. They should allow any company to apply for these contracts – and structure it in such a way that they could attempt to buy up the necessary facilities after applying.
The goal of this legislation should not be to prop up General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford – but to rejuvenate the car industry in the area and to utilize as much of the infrastructure and employees already built in the area.
This legislation will not be able to be crafted and debated in the next week. This will need a new Congress and a new president.
There are many troublesome paths that can be taken here. To choose the least bad will require patience and deliberation. Which is why this matter must wait until after January 20th.
[digg-reddit-me]Hillary Clinton is not the best candidate for Barack Obama to choose as his Secretary of State.
She has the necessary gravitas; she has the experience; she has a similar worldview (more on that later); she has significant political weight in America; she has many established relationships with worldwide leaders; she has an undeniable star power since her primary campaign; she has been a workhorse in the Senate; she knows – at almost all times – the proper and diplomatic answer to preserve the status quo.
There are a few obvious obstacles to placing Hillary in this position:
- She made a big issue of her disagreements with Obama on foreign policy during the primary campaign, going so far as to call his policies “naive” and “irresponsible.” Now she would be expected to carry out these policies and not undermine them.
- She has her own foreign policy team which she could easily fill the State Department with, starting with Richard Holbrooke; it would be a fight for Obama to get a significant number of his own foreign policy team at State; in addition, there is bad blood between the Hillary camp and a number of Obama’s advisors – especially those who worked initially for the Clintons – complicating who could be appointed where and possibly the working relationships.
- Given these two above factors, there is a considerable chance that Obama could face a struggle in enacting his foreign policy agenda – and Clinton and her team of insiders could plausibly mount a bureacratic struggle undermining Obama’s agenda – much as Dick Cheney and his team were able to undermine Colin Powell.
- She and her husband have always been surrounded by drama – from Arkansas to the White House to her primary campaign – in stark contrast to the No-Drama-Obama team.
- She caused a serious international incident during the primary season causing both our strong allies to criticize her and our enemies to complain to the United Nations; everyone makes mistakes, but in this instance she seemed to choose to cause this incident to gain political capital – not the best attitude for a potential rival who would be acting as your Secretary of State.
- Her husband and his Clinton Foundation make for a huge amount of potential conflicts.
- She has often seemed physically uncomfortable with Obama and Obama has often seemed less certain of himself around her.
All of these obstacles can and should be overcome – if she is the best candidate for the job.
But she isn’t. There is in fact another high profile candidate who brings considerable assets Hillary lacks while also lacking her deficiencies: Chuck Hagel.
Hagel:
- Has agreed with many of Obama’s foreign policy positions and defended them against attacks both from Hillary Clinton and the Republican Party and John McCain;
- As a Republican, would provide political cover to Obama at home, making it harder to characterize Obama’s foreign policy as “typical, liberal weakness;”
- Would send a message at home and abroad that Obama’s foreign policy will be bipartisan, strong, forward-thinking, and would mark the return of common sense to America’s foreign policy;
- Is comfortable enough with Obama, and Obama with him, that he accompanied Obama on his worldwide tour during the campaign.
- He’s a low key figure.
I think Hillary Clinton is – of the possible choices I have heard mentioned – the second best of all the options. But Hagel is far better – because he agrees with Obama on these significant matters of controversy.
The ideal place for Hillary would be in the Department of Defense. She would be a ground-breaking pick – and one that would burnish the national security creditials she will want to use again in her almost inevitable retry.
It would make even better sense to leave Robert Gates in as Secretary of Defense for the next year or two – and work with him to start those tough spending cuts on big, Cold War era projects that will be needed. Then, after those cuts have been pushed through – get Hillary in as Secretary of Defense. This would also have the secondary effect of keeping her extra busy mastering her new position in the run-up to the 2012 election, helping prevent any potential mischief. In the meantime, Hillary could spend the next two years in the Senate working with Ted Kennedy on the project that she started her political career working on: health care. She could also focus on infrastructure improvements – as she has been – and which are extremely important if less than glamorous.
Update: Ken Silverstein over at Harper’s has his own list of reasons Hillary shouldn’t be Secretary of State.
His number 2 is a very important point I overlooked:
- It would be impossible, politically, to fire Hillary. No matter what she says or does, or how insubordinate, Obama will be stuck with her as long as she wants to stay.
H/t to Andrew Sullivan on the link.
[Above image by Angela Radulescu.]
Categories
Lieberman
Everyone seems to have very strongly held positions as to whether Joe Lieberman should be allowed to keep his committee positions in the next Senate. I don’t have a strong position.
It’s clear that Lieberman went further than any Democrat should have in attacking the nominee of his party on a personal level – saying he would be afraid for America if Obama won as late as the day before the election. (TPIP has an excellent video from Rachel Maddow’s show over at his site explaining some of the various reasons Joe the Lieberman shouldn’t be allowed to keep his position.)
Yglesias points out that Lieberman – in trying to make the case to keep himself as head of his various committees – seemed to be threatening to vote against the positions he has held for years if he is removed:
As it stands, Lieberman seems to be saying that he deserves to stay in charge of the committee in virtue of his moderately progressive domestic views, but that continuing to hold those views is contingent on him getting favors from the Democratic leadership.
As Rachel Maddow pointed out, Lieberman’s position has more than a mere symbolic relevance – as he held off various investigations of the Bush administration since 2006 with his committee chair position. As long as Lieberman is considered a Democrat, his criticisms of the Democrats will carry extra weight.
But at the same time – by removing him the Democrats would risk alienating moderate Republicans, who they will likely need to get past filibusters. Without Lieberman the Democrats would have no chance at the 60 votes needed to override filibusters. Plus, Lieberman’s demotion and the accompanying commotion would not send the message of bipartisan cooperation Obama is trying to cultivate as he readies to take on the many challenges ahead.
Either option has it’s negatives. The best approach would be for Obama to step in; for Lieberman to apologize to Obama; for Obama to indicate that he would be willing to consider doing what he could to prevent Lieberman from having his committee chairmanships removed; and for whoever the enforcer is in the party – Rahm Emanuel – or whoever else – to extract from Lieberman a promise to vote with the Democrats on any potential filibuster issue. He can vote his conscience or politics or whatever on the issue when it comes to the floor – but he would make a public statement that he would not support any filibuster to block the agenda of the president of the United States of America.
That’s the only thing the Democrats need Joe Lieberman’s vote for – to prevent the filibuster. At almost every other point, with decent party unity, and most likely some Republican cross-overs, they win with ease.
Joe Lieberman’s public statement that President Obama’s agenda deserves an up or down vote could make a significant difference in what can be accomplished in the first 100 days.
It seems as if Hillary Clinton is going to be the next Secretary of State. And it seems like a done deal at this point – with the coy public statements and influentials lining up behind it.
I’m not thrilled. I think she’s a better choice than John Kerry or Bill Richardson, whose names were also being bandied about.
But the candidate I think would be truly brilliant for Secretary of State would be Chuck Hagel. Obama is certainly going to do some controversial things in foreign policy – common sense things really that became political fodder for attacks – such as engaging in direct diplomacy with Iran, being more aggressive with regards to Pakistan, etcetera. A Republican as Secretary of State would help help provide political cover for these controversial decisions; but more importantly, it would make it clear that Obama is not taking “liberal” positions – but common sense ones. It would serve as notice to the world that Obama’s foreign policy is bipartisan, reflecting not just this president but a broad consensus across political parties. In fact, Chuck Hagel is perfect for this role as defended Obama’s foreign policy positions against both Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
The position I would reccomend for Hillary would be Secretary of Defense. Obama could come to some agreement with Robert Gates that allows him to stay for a year or so – and offer to put Hillary in after that. She’s tough enough; it would give her important credentials for a later run for president; it would be breaking yet another glass ceiling.
[T]he North Carolina county where Palin expressed her delight at being in the “real America” went for Obama by more than 18 percentage points.
The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of “patriotism.” What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That’s not who we are.
So even as we celebrated our first black president, we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected him. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said in February, and indeed millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country.
Aside from the schlocky sentence, “The actual real America is everyone,” an excellent column.
I’ve just gotten around to reading this Sunday’s news columns – the ones I normally read on either Sunday or Monday. Tom Friedman’s column impressed me a great deal – even though it started out as the saccharine sales pitch I am so used to hearing from him – it ended with this tough talk:
So to everyone overseas I say: thanks for your applause for our new president. I’m glad you all feel that America “is back.” If you want Obama to succeed, though, don’t just show us the love, show us the money. Show us the troops. Show us the diplomatic effort. Show us the economic partnership. Show us something more than a fresh smile. Because freedom is not free and your excuse for doing less than you could is leaving town in January. [my emphasis added]
That last line is the one that gets me. It gets to the heart at much of the more reasonable conservative frustrations with the “international community” and Europe. (The less reasonable frustrations are another story.) But more important – Friedman identifies one of the arguments Obama will need to make in order to translate the goodwill generated by his election to motivate worldwide leaders to help him take on the global challenges we will are facing.
Also – I’ve decided to start linking to the regular version of New York Times articles rather than to the printable format which I prefer. As the Times will likely be facing some financial problems in the near future, I figure it’s the least I can do.
Not quite a conspiracy – but Joshua Micah Marshall just reported on the final piece of the puzzle I seem to have been missing that helps explain:
- the endorsement of Obama by Colin Powell;
- the constant chatter about keeping Bob Gates on as Defense Secretary since at least September; and
- the tacit support of Obama by Chuck Hagel – from his criticisms of McCain during the election to his accompanying Obama on his European tour during the campaign.
The final piece being – Brent Scowcroft (h/t Andrew Sullivan), the former National Security Advisor under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush and a former Lieutenant General in the Air Force, and a guy so personally close to George H. W. Bush that he co-wrote Bush’s memoirs with him.
Hagel, Powell, and Gates all have been close allies of Scowcroft, especially in fighting against neo-conservatives in the George W. Bush administration. And he has apparently been working behind-the-scenes with Obama and his foreign policy team since the summer at latest.
Indeed, the roots of this defection of foreign policy realist Republicans to the Obama camp can probably be seen in this April 2008 article in the New York Times in which Lawrence Eagleburger, of the realist camp himself, describes a battle going on for McCain’s “soul” between the realist and neoconservative Republican foreign policy camps. By the summer, it became pretty clear which side had won that battle – as McCain embraced one neoconservative position after another and surrogates claimed he wanted to “kill the United Nations.”
By the summer, Scowcroft had begun to unofficially advise the Obama campaign; there was talk of Bob Gates staying on at Defense; Senator Hagel began to criticize McCain while praising Obama; and Powell decided to endorse Obama publicly.
[digg-reddit-me]Evan Thomas of Newsweek has written up an excellent series of seven articles from the research of a team of reporters given behind-the-scenes access to the McCain and Obama campaigns on the condition that they not publish anything until after the election. At the end of the fourth article, he explains an incident that demonstrates the sheer organizing power of the Obama operation:
At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready—our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We‘ve been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it.
The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.