Category: The Opinionsphere

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Election 2012 Jindal The Opinionsphere

Jindal 2012 (cont.)

Michael Gerson in the Washington Post reveals both Bobby Jindal’s greatest asset as a politician and his greatest weakness. The strength is Jindal’s religiousity – which is Catholic but in a way that is unusually endearing to evangelicals, the Republican base:

In Louisiana, Jindal is the darling of evangelical and charismatic churches, where he often tells his conversion story. One Louisiana Republican official has commented, “People think of Bobby Jindal as one of us.” Consider that a moment. In some of the most conservative Protestant communities, in one of the most conservative states in America, Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, a strong Catholic with parents from Punjab, is considered “one of us.”

In passing, Gerson mentions that sometimes it might seem that Jindal lacks, “a lack of human connection and organizing vision.”

The “lack of human connection” is main complaint against Jindal. He’s seen as cold, calculating, and unempathetic – indifferent to those hurt by the policies he advocates.

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Election 2012 Financial Crisis Jindal Politics The Opinionsphere

Bobby Jindal’s Soapbox (cont.)

The New York Times explains what was going on with the “strings” that Bobby Jindal was complaining about on Sunday’s Meet the Press:

States that accept the stimulus money aimed at the unemployed are required to abide by new federal rules that extend unemployment protections to low-income workers and others who were often shorted or shut out of compensation. This law did not just materialize out of nowhere. It codified positive changes that have already taken place in at least half the states.

To qualify for the first one-third of federal aid, the states need to fix arcane eligibility requirements that exclude far too many low-income workers. To qualify for the rest of the aid, states have to choose from a menu of options that include extending benefits to part-time workers or those who leave their jobs for urgent family reasons, like domestic violence or gravely ill children.

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Barack Obama Financial Crisis Politics The Opinionsphere Videos

The Partisan Eruption During Obama’s State of the Union

[digg-reddit-me]I thought this was the most interesting moment in yesterday’s speech – as the partisan feelings of the Republicans erupted, and then were responded to by the Democrats.

Throughout the speech, Obama seemed to want to talk through partisan lines, trying to minimize the applause. But here the Republicans took the first half of an Obama antimonic device and interrupted his speech – their only real excitement of the night. They seemed to relish in the fact that Obama was “admitting” that the deficit was a worthy issue, jeering. Of course, Obama has planned to pivot to the deficit and entitlement spending all along – speaking of a forthcoming Grand Bargain even before he took office. In the end, this demonstration made the Republicans look rather petty. But then, as Obama completed his antimonic device, stating that the enormous deficit was “inherited,” the Democrats took advantage of their opportunity to pettily respond to the Republican jeering.

This exchange captures the dynamic of Obama’s Washington so far – as Republicans and Democrats jeer each other and posture against one another while Obama tries to explain what he’s doing and to get a serious response.

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Barack Obama Economics Financial Crisis The Opinionsphere

Mechanical Economics

Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker:

[Obama] recently characterized his team as a group of “mechanics,” which suggests an emphasis not on ideology but on details and problem-solving.

Makes me think I was onto something…

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Barack Obama Domestic issues Economics Financial Crisis Green Energy Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

The Larger Narrative

[digg-reddit-me]David Brooks:

The crisis was labeled an economic crisis, but it was really a psychological crisis.

Republican pollster David Winston:

[Obama]’s going to have to fit other issues into the larger narrative of the economy.

Michael D. Shear and Paul Kane in the Washington Post:

Whichever side proves to be right, the sharp, partisan lines over the stimulus bill make it plain that both parties intend to exact a political cost over last week’s votes. And their leaders are looking to history for inspiration as they consider how to maneuver in the weeks and months ahead…

Republicans have made it clear that they intend to try to shift the economic debate toward concern about the federal deficit.

Obama is now completing the three-step jig he planned from the beginning, with his address to Congress tonight focused on the Grand Bargain needed to shore up our economy for the forseeable future.

The first step of this jig was supposed to be easy, nonpartisan, and uncontroversial – a spending and tax cutting bill to stimulate the economy. The second step was supposed to be harder but still nonpartisan – dealing with the mortgage and banking messes. In both cases, Obama has approached these problems as a mechanic trying to figure out what has gone wrong and taking whatever steps are necessary to fix it. Just as a mechanic does not make moral judgments about springs and gears but focuses instead on doing what is necessary to get the machine working again, so Obama approached the economy. Most Americans appreciate this, as polls show that while many dislike the specific measures he has had to take, they approve of the job he is doing. The question was: how to get growth started again – greedy bankers and lying loan applicants and wasteful consumers all are being bailed out – because the problems they have caused are “gumming up the works.” And the consumers at least are being encouraged to continue in their spendthrift ways – at least for now, as Dana Milbank explained:

[Ben Bernanke] even indulged in a bit of economist humor when talking about the paradox of encouraging people to spend even though overspending caused the problem: “Somebody once called this the Augustinian principle, which says something like, ‘Let me be moral, but not quite yet.’ “

The third step is more complicated and politically fraught – as Obama seeks to tackle the third-rail of American politics – Social Security; and at the same time, health care reform; and deficit reduction; and tax reform; and possibly climate change legislation. Obama argues that this economic crisis – and the borrowing to stimulate us out of the economic crisis – have created a “fierce urgency of now” – and that all these issues must be tackled at once. 

John Harwood of The New York Times spoke with Senator Judd Gregg about this:

To protect America’s currency and its borrowing capacity, Mr. Gregg said in an interview, “the world has to be told that we’re going to be fiscally disciplined in the out years.”

Efforts to tame long-run entitlement spending may find more Republican support than Mr. Obama achieved on the stimulus. “He has extremely fertile ground in the Senate,” Mr. Gregg said, crediting the president’s early outreach and “courageous position of saying the can’s been kicked down the road long enough.”

Yet despite the bipartisan consensus that these issues must be tackled, here is where the real disagreements should be. Contra George F. Will who argued constantly that the stimulus bill and banking and mortgage bailouts should be opposed by Republicans and supported by Democrats on based their principles, the initial stimulus and other emergency measures should only have raised principled objections from those with an unflagging belief in the free market – which describes only a minority of Republicans. These measures violate the ideologies of both parties – as big business is bailed out and the market is intervened in. There were issues to be raised as to what the most effective methods of dealing with the crisis were – but to oppose measures wholesale as the Republicans did – indicates a lack of seriousness.

The real debate should come now as we decide the shape of things to come and address the moral and political and long-term issues instead of the emergency measures taken to attempt to stimulate the economy.

But in this challenge is an opportunity, as Richard Florida explained in The Atlantic:

The Stanford economist Paul Romer famously said, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” The United States, whatever its flaws, has seldom wasted its crises in the past. On the contrary, it has used them, time and again, to reinvent itself, clearing away the old and making way for the new. Throughout U.S. history, adaptability has been perhaps the best and most quintessential of American attributes. Over the course of the 19th century’s Long Depression, the country remade itself from an agricultural power into an industrial one. After the Great Depression, it discovered a new way of living, working, and producing, which contributed to an unprecedented period of mass prosperity. At critical moments, Americans have always looked forward, not back, and surprised the world with our resilience. Can we do it again?

David Brooks writes with both concern and a carefully measured dose of hope:

[Obama’s] aides are unrolling a rapid string of plans: to create three million jobs, to redesign the health care system, to save the auto industry, to revive the housing industry, to reinvent the energy sector, to revitalize the banks, to reform the schools — and to do it all while cutting the deficit in half.

If ever this kind of domestic revolution were possible, this is the time and these are the people to do it. The crisis demands a large response. The people around Obama are smart and sober. Their plans are bold but seem supple and chastened by a realistic sensibility.

Brooks is still concerned about how this may turn out. As are we all. 

With tonight’s speech, Obama will begin to craete his legacy – beyond fixing the problems accrued during Bush’s tenure. He will begin to, at long last, deal with the stability issues raised by the combination of FDR’s New Deal revision of the social contract and Reagan’s counter-revolution, as he sets a fiscally sane course for the future. In the midst of this crisis, if Obama is to be the leader we need him to be, he needs to see the opportunity to re-write the social contract and create a more stable economic, financial, and international system. Tonight is his chance to make that case. 

Here’s hope it is not wasted.

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Barack Obama History Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere

A Confession of Love To The Paradox That Is America

Andrew Sullivan sees the essence of America’s strength as it’s constitutional Burkean conservatism:

I’ve learnt over the years that the constitutional system that seems designed to prevent change has more wisdom in it than some more centralised parliamentary systems; and because the very chaotic, decentralised and often irrational mess of American state and federal politics also allows for real innovation and debate in ways that simply do not occur as vibrantly elsewhere. The frustration and innovation are part of the same system. You cannot remove one without also stymieing the other.

Yet:

America can drive you up the wall. To Europeans and world-weary Brits, it can sometimes seem almost barmy in its backwardness. It is a country where one state, Arkansas, has just refused to repeal a statute barring atheists from holding public office but managed in the same session to pass a law allowing guns in churches. It incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than even Russia and aborts more babies per capita than secular Europe.

Darwin remains a controversial figure, but Sarah Palin was a serious candidate to be vice-president…

On race, of course, this is especially true. No civilised country sustained slavery as recently as America or defended segregation as tenaciously as the American South until just a generation ago. In my lifetime, mixed-race couples were legally barred from marrying in many states. But equally in my lifetime, a miscegenated man who grew up in Hawaii won a majority of the votes in the old slave state of Virginia to become the first minority president of any advanced western nation.

That is the paradox of America; and after a while you find it hard to appreciate anything more coherent. What keeps America behind is also what keeps pushing it relentlessly, fitfully forward…

You live with the worst because you yearn for the best, because the worst in its turn seems somehow to evoke the best. From the civil war came Abraham Lincoln; from the Great Depression came Franklin D. Roosevelt; from segregation came Martin Luther King; and from George Bush came Barack Obama. America may indeed drive us up the wall, but it also retains a wondrous capacity to evoke the mountain top and what lies beyond.

Read the whole thing.

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Barack Obama China Economics Financial Crisis Foreign Policy The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere

Dubya’s China Legacy

Isabel Hilton in The Guardian:

George W Bush’s presidency…was a pleasure for Beijing to deal with: it distracted itself with two unwinnable wars, leaving China to expand its influence, quietly contrasting Beijing’s peaceful international profile with the US’s embattled one. By playing the bad boy in international climate politics, the Bush administration eased the pressure on China to do more about its own soaring emissions. And in the most active and important aspect of Bush’s China policy, the strategic economic dialogue, set up in 2006 to strengthen ties, the US depended on China first to soak up US debt and then to help manage the consequences of the crisis.

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Barack Obama Law National Security Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

Andrew Sullivan’s Warning Shot

I agree Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald on this:

Glenn is absolutely right to remind us that the whole point of our resistance to the war crimes of the last seven years was not to rely on our subjective beliefs about the moral integrity of a lone man in the Oval Office. It is to restore a maximally transparent, lawful and effective policy against Jihadist terrorism under the rule of law and the Constitution. Obama needs to be held to exactly the same standards as Bush. And if he thinks we will give him a pass, he needs to think again.

The point of my previous post is that Obama may agree that we must force him to be accountable as well. It is better for the coequal branches of government to check the president’s power than for these branches to defer to the president’s renunciation of certain powers.

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Barack Obama Law Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere

The Games Obama Plays

[digg-reddit-me]Thesis: Obama is a systematic thinker – and given some of his clearly expressed views on the presidency – he may be setting up a situation where the other branches of government will be able to definitively limit the powers of the presidency. This is preferable to the president voluntarily renouncing powers – as it places the responsibility for checking the executive branch on the system rather than on the chief executive himself.

The Rest: In his inaugural address, Barack Obama seemed to clearly repudiate the Bush administration’s lawless approach to the War on Terror with this oft-quoted line:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

In this, and in many other instances, Obama made clear that he would restore the Rule of Law – and that he considered himself, as president, to be subject to the law. This may seem to be a fundamental and basic understanding for any chief executive in a liberal democracy, but for the last eight years, the Bush administration advanced arguments and pursued policies as if it were not subject to the law.

Every time the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration, Congress passed a law to restrain the executive branch in some way,some quasi-independent parts of the executive branch opposed him –  it was always uncertain what Bush would do – whether he would simply ignore the attempts to check his power; whether he would declare the checks unconstitutional and then ignore them; whether he would secretly ignore them and prosecute anyone who informed authorities that he was breaking the law; or whether he would attempt to force Congress to pass a legislative justification for his actions. In fact, Bush at one time of another did all three of these. Obama has made clear that he not only respects the Rule of Law but considers checks and balances on the presidency to be part of the democratic process set out by the Constitution. Obama is mindful of the chief executive’s role is in this system – and that, as Gregory Craig, White House Counsel explained:

[Obama] is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency.

Combine this statement with Obama’s decisions regarding rendition, the state secrets privilege, and investigating abuses of the Bush administration – and many civil libertarians and critical observers of the Bush administration from Glenn Greenwald to Andrew Sullivan to Charlie Savage are preparing to be disappointed.

Let’s take a step back for a moment and postulate that Obama holds these three relatively uncontroversial and related positions that he has articulated on numerous occasions:

  1. He believes the president is subject to the law and is committed to upholding the Rule of Law.
  2. He believes that correct processes should be followed and that, “Each branch of government is balanced by powers in the other two coequal branches.”
  3. At the same time, he has little desire to use his political capital and energy prosecuting Bush administration officials.

Obama articulated these three sentiments in a response to a question by Sam Stein of the Huffington Post at his February 9, 2009 press conference:

My view is also that nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen; but that generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.

Dahlia Lithwick, another chronicler and critic of the Bush administration’s legal abuses, interpreted Obama’s statements and actions this way:

…by keeping the worst of the Bush administration’s secrets hidden, the Obama Justice Department can defer awkward questions about prosecuting the wrongdoers. In his press conference Monday night, Obama repeated his mantra that “nobody is above the law and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, people should be prosecuted just like ordinary citizens. But generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” The principle once again is that Obama is for prosecuting Bush administration lawbreaking only when proof of such lawbreaking bonks him on the head. All the more reason to keep it out of sight, then.

But to me, this sounds like an invitation to push him to do what is right – as FDR said to numerous audiences who came to ask him to pay attention to their issue (and here I paraphrase):

I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it

Supporting this, aside from Obama’s many statements on these matters, are the public opinions of many of those he appointed to key positions in the Justice Department, including the attorney general:

Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution…. We owe the American people a reckoning. [my emhpasis]

Here is where the speculation really starts though – and only time will determine if these guesses are correct. Obama, as president, does not believe it is his role to give up executive power. For one, by doing so, he is antagonizing certain elements of the executive branch that he needs to bring to his side – in the state secrets case, for example, the CIA.

Secondly, by voluntarily renouncing a power, he is in some sense affirming the inherence of this power. Bush believed he had the power to say an entire subject matter was a state secret and thus have an entire lawsuit revoked; if Obama claimed he didn’t have this power, and the Courts then ruled he didn’t, the Court would not be “checking” the president so much as deferring to the new president’s view of his own powers. However, if Obama maintains he has this power – and the Court rules that he does not – it does provide a check. If Congress passes a law restraining the president’s use of this power, it will again provide a check. Each of these scenarios provides a firmer check on presidential power than does Obama’s giving up of these powers. It places the responsibility for checking executive powers not on the President, but within the system, where it should be.

Third, Obama has a number of crises to deal with right now and realizes that there are significant elements who feel strongly about these balance-of-powers issues. What he wants then – is for those groups that are passionate about these issues to prepare the public and to force him to act on them. This way, he can preserve his political capital – and by merely responding to issues forced upon him can avoid charges of looking like he is merely out for retribution.

If this is Obama’s thinking, then we can expect him to not oppose efforts to reign in his powers too strongly – and to accept those limits once they have been legitimated by the Courts or the Congress. If this isn’t Obama’s thinking, we can still attempt to force him to act but the outcome will be less certain.

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Barack Obama Financial Crisis Politics The Opinionsphere Videos

What Are Republican Principles Again?

[digg-reddit-me]Dan Akroyd joined Saturday Night Live to explain how Republicans were using this crisis to move past business-as-usual while staying in touch with the citizens they represent:

(h/t TPIP for the link. I had already seen the clip, but was fruitlessly looking for it on Hulu until I saw it on his blog.)

I must commend the Republican Party for discovering the value of fiscal responsibility, of Congressional oversight, and of Congress’s proper role as a coequal branch of government and a balance to the executive branch now that they have no elective power except a slender foothold in Congress. A few more losses in Congress and we might see the Republican Party start making the much maligned case for judicial activism – as our federal court system is filled with conservatives, despite protests to the contrary.

It seems to be part of the nature of our oppositional party structure that such ideological shifts make fools of politicians from time to time. Sometimes I think it would be better for them if we just booted them all out so they wouldn’t need to face the embarrassment of changing their opinions on how things should work so obviously based on political calculations. 

Of course, giving the lie to the Republican’s newfound financial responsibility (aside from their continued support for such expensive programs as continuing Bush’s tax cuts and funding the various imperial activities which together cost some trillions of dollars and got us in the financial pickle we are in now) is their response to the Obama stimulus plan – a tax cut plan that would expand the deficit even further:

 

At the end of the clip, that was Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal. In response to her: yes, we all did notice that there are no Republicans in charge of anything in Washington anymore. I wonder how and why that happened?

At the same time, the Republicans are now trying to make a big deal of business-as-usual in Washington – after embracing the same practices while in power. This is, of course, standard fare in itself. As Republican opinion-makers suddenly begin to decry how Congressmen and women did not have time to read the stimulus bill, I think most of us remember that infamous exchange from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 in which a Congressman explains why no one read the PATRIOT Act before it was signed into law:

My purpose is not to defend these practices – but to point out the hypocrisy in suddenly objecting to them. The Republicans, led by Eric Cantor, are acting with the transparent hypocrisy of an Inspector Renault:

In all honesty, I do welcome the Republicans embrace of fiscal responsibility, of Congressional oversight, and of Congress’s proper role as a coequal branch of government and a balance to the executive branch, hypocrisy and all. Their sanctimony on the subject though is hard to stomach.