It's the wages, stupid

"I'm no economist," to paraphrase Republican presidential hopefuls. But even a casual reader knows that for 35-odd years the lion's share of economic growth has gone to the wealthiest, and that the trend has accelerated in the last decade.

We're told, e.g. by David Leonhardt, that arresting the trend and creating wage growth is a gigantic mystery, and that Democrats, ostensibly the party of the less-than-wealthy, can only nibble around the edges, as with middle class tax cuts. That is, get GDP growth out of near-neutral and wage pressure will rise.

Now cometh billionaire Nick Hanauer, this generation's class traitor extraordinaire, to call bullshit and place the spotlight squarely on labor law and deliberate policy choices that have eroded workers' leverage vs. owners.  His focus is on wages -- specifically, in the piece below, on overtime pay. You can extrapolate and imagine a party that focuses relentlessly on the rules governing pay and workplace rules. I'm quoting an extended chunk here because I want to add my drops to the ocean, i.e. get a few more people to read this:

A prophet not without honor save in his own party

How many political prognostications hold up well nearly five years later?  Give Republican Cassandra David Frum credit for seeing the landscape clearly in February 2008:

John Mitchell, Richard Nixon’s attorney-general, predicted in 1970: “This country is going so far right you won’t recognise it.” His prophecy was vindicated. Now its time is up: 2008 is shaping up to be the first decisive Democratic victory since 1964 – a 1980 in reverse...

In 2002, equal numbers of Americans identified as Republicans and Democrats. In the six years since, Republican identification has collapsed back to the level recorded before Ronald Reagan. The decline has been steepest among young voters. If they eat right, exercise and wear seatbelts, today’s 20-somethings will be voting against George W. Bush deep into the 2060s. Most ominously, US polls show an ideological sea change: a desire for a more activist government, a loss of interest in the tax question and a shift to the left on most social issues (although not, interestingly, abortion).

We all fail if health care reform fails

Reading first Jonathan's Cohn's account of the uphill struggle to muster enough House Democrats to pass the Senate health care bill with a reconciliation fix, and then Amy Sullivan analysis of how the fragile majoirty that passed the House bill may founder over abortion, I heard myself mouthing former Counterterroism chief Richard Clark's words at the 9/11 Commission hearings: "your government failed you...I failed you."

If Congress does not pass a comprehensive health care reform bill this year, that will constitute a massive collective failure in which we all share.

Republicans will have failed in their callous disregard for the plight of tens of millions of uninsured and tens more millions underinsured Americans,and in their willingness to place political gain ahead of the welfare of the people they are elected to serve. They will have failed in their success at scuttling  the country's best hope of bending the health care cost curve and thus laying the basis for a sustainable fiscal future.

Progressive activists will have failed in their refusal to recognize that for all its concessions to industry and to the spending inhibitions of the most conservative senators in the Democratic caucus, the bill that passed the Senate maintains the capacity to transform our health care system vastly for the better. They will have failed to recognize that the bill's limitations were imposed by the constraints of the Constitution and the filibuster and the U.S. electorate, that it could not be more sweeping than the most conservative Democrats would allow.

Gates: "Conflict will be fundamentally political"

In a speech at the Air War College in Maxwell, Alabama today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates' main theme was the immense difficulty in a large organization of overcoming bureaucratic inertia to effect change that adapts the organization's capabilities to a changing world. And he explained why the hard task of effecting major change is needed - now and always. Unlike Bush, Gates does nuance -- his strategic vision is both detailed and sweeping, embracing a complex and interlocking set of mandates. Here is the core of that vision:

An unconventional era of warfare requires unconventional thinkers. That is because this era's range of security challenges, from global terrorism to ethnic conflicts, from rogue nations to rising powers, cannot be overcome by traditional military means alone. Conflict will be fundamentally political in nature and will require the integration of all elements of national power. Success, to a large extent, will depend less on imposing one's will on the enemy or putting bombs on targets, though we must never lose our ability or our will to unsheathe the sword when necessary. Instead, ultimate success or failure will increasingly depend more on shaping the behavior of others, friends and adversaries, and most importantly, the people in between.

This new set of realities and requirements have meant a wrenching set of changes for our military establishment that until recently was almost completely oriented toward winning the big battles and the big wars. Based on my experience at CIA, at Texas A&M and now the Department of Defense, it is clear to me that the culture of any large organization takes a long time to change, and the really tough part is preserving those elements of the culture that strengthen the institution and motivate the people in it, while shedding those elements of the culture that are barriers to progress and achieving the mission.

Gates keeps a pretty low profile. In his short tenure, though, we have seen him working all the levers at his disposal to "shape the behavior of others" -- from the Europeans to the Iraqis to the Cheney cabal to the Democrats. He tacks back and forth to move forces even more intractable than large bureaucracies: elected officials. His tactics have included appealing directly to the European people to 'decouple' the mission in Afghanistan from that in Iraq -- and throw their support behind the former; stating publicly that Democratic talk of withdrawal timetables put useful pressure on the Iraqi government; inducing Democrats to acknowledge the need to leave some troops in Iraq by himself acknowledging the need to draw down troops; and first pushing to have the NIE on Iran released, then more recently stating matter-of-factly that Iran is "hell-bent" on getting nuclear weapon while warning that going to war with Iran would be disastrous . His public statements are often deliberately provocative to a target audience, but always in the most calculated and measured way. The man is a national treasure, plain and simple.

Related posts:
On the same page: Gates, Mullen, Powell, Obama
Can Gates Steer the Surge?

Obama's Metapolitics

It's often said that Obama's speeches are stirring but unsubstantial -- long on hope, short on policy.

But Obama's pitch to the nation isn't insubstantial. It's meta-- a substantive critique of our political process, built on this core insight: "we need to do more than turn the page on the failed Bush-Cheney policies; we have to turn the page on the politics that helped make those policies possible."

A long train of politicians have told us that "Washington is broken." But Obama has put together a sustained critique of how the political process is broken, and how to fix it. Here, from a Jan. 30, '08 speech in Denver, is Obama's litany of the modes of political malfunction:

Lobbyists setting an agenda in Washington that feeds the inequality, insecurity, and instability in our economy.

Division and distraction that keeps us from coming together to deal with challenges like health care, and clean energy, and crumbling schools year after year after year.

Cronyism that gave us Katrina instead of competent government. And secrecy that made torture permissible and illegal wiretaps possible.

It's a politics that uses 9/11 to scare up votes; and fear and falsehoods to lead us into a war in Iraq that should've never been authorized and should've never been waged

Lobbying. Partisanship. Cronyism. Secrecy. Fear-mongering. Lying. Promising to fix these malfunctions can sound gauzy, because much of the cure lies in the power of example in the leader making the promise. You can legislate lobbying rules, and against secrecy -- but not against lying, or scorched-earth attack politics, or cronyism.

With regard to partisanship and honesty, Obama is his argument. His pledge to remain truthful, his manner of addressing the whole country, the support he's attracted from independents and Republicans while laying out a full "liberal" agenda, his record of moving bipartisan legislation on lobbying reform, videotaped police interrogations, Schip -- he seeks to demonstrate a transcendence of paralyzing partisanship without mincing on an agenda of progressive action on health care, tax policy, global warming and troop withdrawal. He says explicitly: this campaign itself embodies the politics I am promising:

And we are showing America what change looks like. From the snows of Iowa to the sunshine of South Carolina, we have built a movement of young and old; rich and poor; black and white; Latino, Asian and Native American. We've reached Americans of all political stripes who are more interested in turning the page than turning up the heat on our opponents. That's how Democrats will win in November and build a majority in Congress. Not by nominating a candidate who will unite the other party against us, but by choosing one who can unite this country around a movement for change.

With regard to Hillary, he seeks a delicate balance in responding to her (and Bill's) attacks on his record and leveling own critique of hers. Implicitly he's arguing that the attacks are different in kind, that she and Bill were distorting his record, but he's not distorting hers. Most delicately, he's incorporated his response to the Clinton smears of January into his critique of Clintonism:

Each candidate running for the Democratic nomination shares an abiding desire to end the disastrous policies of the current administration. But we must decide...just what kind of Party we want to be, and what lessons we've learned from the bitter partisanship of the last two decades. We can be a Party that tries to beat the other side by practicing the same do-anything, say-anything, divisive politics that has stood in the way of progress; or we can be a Party that puts an end to it.

The "do-anything, say-anything" tag is Obama's takeaway from the Clintons' suggestions that he was soft on opposition to the war in Iraq and in defense of abortion rights. Those attacks have become Exhibit A in his portrait of a broken political system. He is saying: you can't build a mandate, a lasting majority if you rely on Rovian campaign tactics. And he carries that attack on Hillary-as-part-of-the-problem into her policy choices, which he suggests are shaped by political calculation. Is this unfair, or a distortion? Judge:

If you choose change, you will have a nominee who doesn't take a dime from Washington lobbyists and PACs. We don't need a candidate who agrees with Republicans that lobbyists are part of the system in Washington. They're part of the problem. And when I'm President, their days of setting the agenda in Washington will be over.

If you choose change, you will have a nominee who doesn't just tell people what they want to hear. Poll-tested positions and calculated answers might be how Washington confronts challenges, but it's not how you overcome them; it's not how you inspire our nation to come together behind a common purpose; and it's not what America needs right now....

Finally, and most painfully, Obama suggests that Hillary Clinton lacked "judgment" and "courage" in her response to the rush to war in Iraq:

I will end the mentality that says the only way for Democrats to look tough on national security is by talking, acting and voting like George Bush Republicans. It's time to reject the counsel that says the American people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is weak and right - it's time to say that we are the Party that is going to be strong and right.

It's time for new leadership that understands that the way to win a debate with John McCain is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq; who agreed with him by voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; who agrees with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don't like; and who actually differed with him by arguing for exceptions for torture before changing positions when the politics of the moment changed.

We need to offer the American people a clear contrast on national security, and when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party, that's exactly what I will do. Talking tough and tallying up your years in Washington is no substitute for judgment, and courage, and clear plans. It's not enough to say you'll be ready from Day One - you have to be right from Day One.

This is tough but fair. As argued in a prior post, Hillary did fail in judgment and courage in the run-up to war in Iraq - not because she voted in support of the resolution authorizing force, but because she later failed to hold Bush to the conditions she laid out in her speech supporting the resolution: seek international support, try weapons inspections first, do not rush to war. When Bush cut the inspections short and prepared for invasion in February and March ''03, she offered her support. Why? She has defended her vote and speech in support of it eloquently, but not her conduct in the months following.

Obama needs to make this case, and he is not shying from it. Paradoxically, his primary proof of "a different kind of politics" is in leveling a devastating but accurate critique of Clintonism.

The Lying Clinton Meme

Barack Obama seemed hesitant as he went after Bill Clinton on Good Morning America today - lots of blinking, lots of pauses. Still, this carefully measured stop-lying-about-my-record counterattack may well be effective, because without using the word "lie," Obama chimed several times in several minutes on the Clintons-can't-quite-tell-the-truth meme that is lodged, with good reason, in our collective psyche:

You know the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling...He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts -- whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas.

I completely understand his wanting to promote his wife's candidacy, and Michelle is out there doing the same thing on my behalf. But I do think think that there should be standards of honesty in any political discourse. That's part of the change I want to bring about. If you have something that just directly contradicts the facts coming from a former president I think that's a problem because people presume that a former president if going to have more credibility. I think there are certain responsibilities that come with that.

I understand him wanting to promote his wife's candidacy. She's got a record that she can run on. But I think it's important that we try to maintain some -- you know, level of honesty and candor during the course of the campaign. If we don't, then we feed the cynicism that has led so many Americans to be turned off to politics."

What I don't want is a situation in which we are so driven to just win that we are willing to say anything, and over time, you know the American people just get turned off because they don't believe what politicians say (my emphasis).

As is usually the case with Obama, his choice of words displays simultaneously his mode of "fighting" - that is, criticizing his opponents - and his mode of "uniting" - acknowledging the element of legitimacy in his opponent's efforts. (As Mark Kleiman points out today, Obama is "perfectly sincere about wanting to make major progressive change without using demonization as a primary political tactic." That goes for Bill Clinton as well as Ronald Reagan.) His tone was more in sorrow than in anger, his stance that of an adult calling timeout when a child's game overheats. Almost every allegation was couched in either praise of (Bill) Clinton or acknowledgment that his support for Hillary is itself legitimate. The rhetoric was masterful; again, I'm not so sure about the delivery. It's that hesitancy that I think made me lean toward Hillary after watching several debates this past fall.

The moment of Clintonian dishonesty that ABC focused on in the aftermath was not that egregious. According to Bill, Obama “said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas." Obama actually said, ``I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.''

Okay, Obama didn't say the ideas were 'good,' but generally, challenging conventional wisdom is thought to be a good thing. Perhaps Obama got his time frame wrong; earlier in the interview, he had acknowledged that the American people were ready for Reagan's call to shrink government, strongly implying that doing so was a "good idea": "I think they [the American people] felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating." (He might have added, but didn't, that "peace through strength" was a good idea, in that our military buildup pressured the Soviets into attempting the reforms that unraveled their economy.)

Obama made his comment more inflammatory by shifting the time frame from the Clinton years to the present--a frame in which the only "ideas" Republicans have acted on are huge tax cuts for the wealthy, government by lobbyists and budgeting by earmarks, and war of choice to preempt imaginary threats.

Obama is on firmer ground calling Bill Clinton out for dismissing his claim to have consistently opposed the war in Iraq as a "fairy tale." There Clinton was engaging in a classic smear-the-Senator maneuver, mis-characterizing up-or-down votes as complete representations of a policy position. Like most Democrats in favor of withdrawing active combat troops from Iraq, Obama did not vote to cut off funding for them while they're there. End of story.