Cllive Crook's disconnect

I do not understand Clive Crook. What seems to me a persistent disconnect in his thinking about U.S. politics and policy is in full evidence in his column today:

A moderate and intelligent opposition to the Democrats’ policies is badly needed. Apparently, nobody in the Republican party aims to provide it. Republican leaders seem intent on presenting the party’s angriest, most stupid and least tolerant face. Some leading Republicans who are moderate by temperament and conviction – John McCain, for instance – are being pushed to the right in primary election contests with more conservative opponents. Others, such as Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, are disowning their previously expressed views or just keeping their heads down.

Republicans are right to say that the Obama administration has over-reached. Democrats failed to convince the country that their healthcare reform was the right solution to an obvious and pressing problem, yet passed their law anyway. Many voters are angry about this, and entitled to be. Also, despite the administration’s denials, the reform will most likely add to public borrowing, which was on a dangerously high trajectory to begin with. Again, they are right to be concerned.

The disconnect seems to be between Crook's recognition that the Republican party has given itself over entirely to fantasist extremism and his insistence that Obama and the Democratic Congress have governed from the far left and have in some fundamental sense violated the will of the electorate.

Bracketing up: HCR, income redistribution and tax reform

David Leonhardt  points out today that the health care bill represents a significant check to the growth of income inequality over the past generation. This point about its tax impact triggered a memory:

A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.

The memory was this: lefty blogger speculation at the dawn of the Obama presidency as to whether Obama would seek to reengineer tax brackets. Nate Silver:

What the discussion over the top marginal tax rate ignores, however (and what Ygelsias picks up upon) is that this rate has been assessed at very different thresholds of income. In 1940, for example, the top marginal tax rate was 81.1 percent -- but this rate only kicked in once you made $5,000,000 or more in income, which is equivalent to about $75,000,000 in today's dollars.

But today, the threshold where the top tax bracket kicks in isn't $75 million, or $5 million, or even $1 million ... it's a mere $357,700. The progressivity of the tax code stops there....

The making of a great President

In his long essay Can America Rise Again? James Fallows sought for a solution to "the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke."  Our political system has not evolved, Fallows warned, citing the unrepresentative Senate, the distortions in the House wrought by gerrymandering, and the near-impossibility of fundamental Constitutional amendment.  So what to do?  Fallows concluded that we can only "muddle through" -- in effect, trust that our society's civil and economic dynamism will continue to throw up leaders who squeeze far-sighted policies through our creaking political institutions:

America has been strong because, despite its flawed system, people built toward the future in the 1840s, and the 1930s, and the 1950s. During just the time when Frederick Law Olmsted designed Central Park, when Theodore Roosevelt set aside land for the National Parks, when Dwight Eisenhower created the Pentagon research agency that ultimately gave rise to the Internet, the American system seemed broken too. They worked within its flaws and limits, which made all the difference. That is the bravest and best choice for us now.

Tonight is a night to celebrate a muddle-through breakthrough.  One month ago,  Barack Obama framed the struggle to pass comprehensive health care reform this way: "What’s being tested here is not just our ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to solve any problem."

The country passed this test because we have a leader who understands how broken our governmental machinery is and works simultaneously to fix our politics and our policies. We elected a President who appreciates how messy democracy is and understands the manifold constraints as well as the multiple levers of presidential power.  His acknowledged errors notwithstanding, Barack Obama moved this mountain because he knows how to prioritize, strategize, execute and communicate. 

What has it got in its pocketses? What's on Stupak's List?

Bart Stupak is a real alpha dog, isn't he? He hangs with those major power brokers the Catholic bishops, and like his puppet masters dismisses the authority of the heads of almost every major order of nuns in the United States:

Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Mich, responded sharply to White House officials touting a letter representing 59,000nuns that was sent to lawmakers urging them to pass the health care bill.

The conservative Democrat dismissed the action by the White House saying, "When I'm drafting right to life language, I don't call up the nuns." He says he instead confers with other groups including "leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and The National Right to Life Committee."

Stupak also maintains that he still has a solid group of 12 House Democrats who will go along with him and vote against the reconciliation package if there isn't a ban on taxpayer-funded abortion.

He met with them Tuesday and said the White House has not successfully peeled off any of them.

The Michigan lawmakers carries the list of the 12 lawmakers allied with him in his pocket, "K Street thinks they know who is on the list. They don't. There are some surprises on there.

Never mind that many of the nuns represented by the letter are on the front lines of this country's broken health care system:

As the heads of major Catholic women’s religious order [sic] in the United States, we represent 59,000 Catholic Sisters in the United States who respond to needs of people in many ways. Among our other ministries we are responsible for running many of our nation’s hospital systems as well as free clinics throughout the country.

We have witnessed firsthand the impact of our national health care crisis, particularly its impact on women, children and people who are poor. We see the toll on families who have delayed seeking care due to a lack of health insurance coverage or lack of funds with which to pay high deductibles and co-pays. We have counseled and prayed with men, women and children who have been denied health care coverage by insurance companies. We have witnessed early and avoidable deaths because of delayed medical treatment.

Never mind too that the nuns find the Senate bill's restrictions on federal abortion funding satisfactory, or that Stupak's longtime Congressional ally Dale Kildee, who spent six years studying for the priesthood, is "convinced that the Senate language maintains the Hyde amendment, which states that no federal money can be used for abortion,” or that Stupak has been caught lying about the Senate bill's adherence to the Hyde Amendment, or that there is strong evidence from Massachusetts and worldwide that expanding health insurance access reduces abortions. 

Stupak has a list in his pocket.  So did Joe McCarthy  -- an entirely fictional one. Stupak does have pro-life colleagues who stood with him when he negotiated his anti-choice amendment to the House bill, some of whom have indicated that they are with him still. But does he have them in his pocket?  If I were a member of the alleged Stupak 12, I'd feel as belittled by him as the nuns were.

Here's hoping that Stupak's political capital proves to be as much sham as his moral capital.