Snowden, patriot; Obama, in denial

This is just to say, for the record, that I think Obama was shamefully disingenuous or self-deluded in declaring in his press conference yesterday that Edward Snowden is not a patriot and suggesting that he himself would have triggered the kind of inquiry into current surveillance practices that Snowden has unleashed if not pushed by Snowden's disclosures.

This, in particular, is a logical elision:

So the fact is, is that Mr. Snowden has been charged with three felonies. If, in fact, he believes that what he did was right, then, like every American citizen, he can come here, appear before the court with a lawyer and make his case

"Not this time": Obama revises himself

The headline takeaway from Obama's press conference yesterday is that he's talking tough about the debt ceiling. And indeed, he elaborated his case against holding the faith and credit of the nation hostage in new and forceful ways. What also struck me, though, is the extent to which Obama implicitly admitted that the obstacles he is now facing are partly of his own making. In fact, since late in his reelection campaign he has been casting is second term as an edited version of the first.

On the economic front, Obama reiterated three core messages yesterday:1) The debt ceiling is no frame within which to negotiate deficit reduction; 2) deficit reduction is not our chief problem; and 3) Republicans' chief goal is to weaken core government functions and commitments, radically altering the social contract. Each was to some degree a revision of a past stance.

Regarding the debt ceiling, as Ezra Klein pointed out yesterday, Obama has been unequivocal since the election: it is not a negotiating chip in budget battles.  Yesterday he stated this simply, forcefully and repeatedly.  Here is the first iteration, in his opening remarks:

Another war, another presidential 'terms sheet'

Well, Obama's approach to launching a police action is really singular, It seems that flying off to Brazil at the outset of Operation Odyssey Dawn was a feature, not a bug. He is signaling that Libya is not going to dominate his agenda.  He seems also to think that he can shape reality (i.e.,' lead'?) with such signals.

Yesterday, I noted that Obama seems to be trying to wish away, or command away, the specter of quagmire.  "Days, not weeks" is his watchword -- repeated, this time in public, today. But today he fleshed out why he thinks he's able to say that -- and showed the architecture of what he's tried to construct as a limited United States engagement.

Asked how he "can 'square' the assertion that Muammar Qadhafi is killing people but that he doesn't have to leave power," Obama unraveled his own riddle of the sphinx as it's emerged over three weeks. He asserted three paradoxes or anomalies:

• The U.N. mandate is limited to stopping civilian deaths, but U.S. policy is to force Qadhafi out.
• The U.S is exerting military leadership, but only in phase 1 of U.N.-authorized coalition action (notwithstanding that its policy goals are more expansive than the U.N's). 
• The U.S. is committed to driving Qadhafi out, but not to driving him out militarily. 

Behold as presidential logic, live-blogged by Politico, doth unfold:

Obama sets a clock ticking on gay marriage

In this afternoon's press conference, Obama made it very clear that he is gearing up to give way on his nominal opposition to gay marriage:

     With respect to the issue of whether gays and lesbians should be able to get married, I’ve spoken about this recently.  As I’ve said, my feelings about this are constantly evolving.  I struggle with this.  I have friends, I have people who work for me, who are in powerful, strong, long-lasting gay or lesbian unions.  And they are extraordinary people, and this is something that means a lot to them and they care deeply about.

     At this point, what I’ve said is, is that my baseline is a strong civil union that provides them the protections and the legal rights that married couples have.  And I think -- and I think that’s the right thing to do.  But I recognize that from their perspective it is not enough, and I think is something that we’re going to continue to debate and I personally am going to continue to wrestle with going forward.

How can you 'continue to wrestle' when you haven't left yourself a leg to stand on? What would Obama have us think he says to those gay friends who don't think his support of civil unions is enough?  This is someone not even trying to hide that there's nothing behind this stance but political expedience.

Obama, the bully pulpit, and the battleship

For those of us juiced by the prospect that Obama might make comprehensive tax reform a focal point of the remainder of his term -- kicked off, as eloquently urged by William Galston, by a vision laid out in the upcoming State of the Union address, Matt Yglesias tosses some cold water in the soup ("juiced?" "soup"? -- never mind):

It sounds silly to call for less presidential leadership, but I think the evidence suggests that what’s needed here is actually a very vague and generic endorsement of the concept of tax reform plus some themeless pudding. Frances Lee’s important book Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U. S. Senate argues persuasively that what happens when a president tries to “lead” on an issue like this is that a dynamic of partisan polarization kicks in. What you really need to get tax reform is for some hard-working members of congress from both parties to take the initiative in hammering out a framework and building support on the Hill. If such a thing happens, the White House should of course try to play a constructive role. But jumping all over the issue and a creating a dynamic where tax reform becomes “a key priority for the Obama administration” that opportunists on the right want to kill for the sake of a political win would not be a constructive intervention.

That is food for thought (and I've ordered Lee's book). In rebuttal, I would point out that political vets seem in any case to be assuming that getting a tax overhaul enacted will be at least a three-year process, and that while "polarizing" the debate early by "presidentializing" it may slow that process, doing so may also a) help Obama politically, and b) improve the ultimate outcome, since his approach to revenue-raising, federal spending, and tax burden distribution is far more reality-based than the Republicans'.  Not that I'm saying Yglesias is wrong - who am I to game out political strategy?

I do think that Lee's observations go a long way toward explaining Obama's policymaking approach up to this point, however.  Obama's abdication of bully pulpit "leadership" at key moments has been so pointed that I think there's got to be a method behind it. The battle of the Bush tax cuts is the most recent example. Ever since the news of Obama's deal with the Republican broke, and I took in the list of stimulative goodies for the nonwealthy piled up on Obama's side of the ledger, I've suspected that the president may not have wanted the tax cuts for the top 2% to sunset right now. His silence when effectively invited to promise a veto of any bill extending those cuts has been deafening at least since September 9, when George Stephenopoulos asked him four times, and he demurred four times. Ever since the Republican landslide become a strong likelihood Obama may have been desperate to buy whatever stimulus he could while he could -- and the sunsetting tax cuts were his only currency.

From placation to implacability

In quick peeks this afternoon, I skimmed news accounts of the president's press conference and of progressives'  heads exploding as Obama lambasted the "purism" and "sanctimony" of those who reject the compromises he's made. On paper, that attack did look cold and seem gratuitous.

I've just watched the whole conference, though, and I thought the whole was the best performance of his presidency.  If you crave fight, if you crave lines in the sand and statements of principle and defense of his record, it's all there.  There were at least three -- no, four -- macro-messages:

1. Republicans' "holy grail" is tax cuts for the wealthy -- that passion defines the party;
2. his own top priorities are (short-term) generating growth and jobs and alleviating the struggles of those harmed by the recession and (long-term) funding the linchpins of sustainable growth (education, R&D, infrastructure);
3. his "compromises" to date have advanced those goals, which cannot be reached by seeking policy "purity";
4. those goals can't be advanced long-term if Republican tax priorities become permanent policy; and
5. because he understands and can articulate (has just articulated) all this, he will win the deferred tax cut battle in 2012 (or, I might interpolate, strike a grand tax deal before that deadline that constitutes the kind of "compromise" he defended).

Obama, whip out that veto pen

I am probably snapping at just the wrong hour. Intellectually, I know that the president's showdown with the Republican leadership will play out long and slow.  Clinton didn't face down Gingrich and Dole over the government shutdown until a year and more after the 1994 election.

But for the moment, I too am tired of defending Obama.

I can accept the electoral landslide.  I think the Democrats were mainly caught holding the bag in a quasi-Depression triggered mainly by Republican misrule. I think that history will honor the president and the 111th Congress, and that the country will reap long-term benefits, from the Patient Protection Act (e.g., its long-term impact on healthcare spending and therefore on the structural deficit), and for substantial if far-from-perfect financial reform, and for a stimulus that was effective as far as it went.  I partially accept the argument of Martin Wolf and Paul Krugman that a too-small stimulus was a grievous error for which we all paid economically and the Democrats, to a never-to-be-known degree, paid politically. I see large achievements and large courage -- as well, paradoxically, as the lack of courage with which Krugman charges the president today (of course the same leadership can exhibit both on different fronts).

What I can't brook at the moment is Obama going all humble and conciliatory on us while Mitch McConnell is literally baying for his political blood, doubling down on his stated goal of making Obama a one-term president.

Reminder-in-Chief

It may be late in the day, but I think Obama's working toward his own 'stay the course':

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  You said this week that Democrats wouldn’t do well in the November elections if it turns out to be a referendum on the economy.  But with millions of people out of work and millions of people losing their homes, how could it not be a referendum on the economy and your handling of it, and why would you not welcome that?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, the -- what I said was that if it was just a referendum on whether we’ve made the kind of progress that we need to, then people around the country would say we’re not there yet.  If the election is about the policies that are going to move us forward versus the policies that will get us back into a mess, then I think the Democrats will do very well.  And here’s why.

As I just indicated, middle-class families had been struggling for a decade, before I came into office. Their wages and incomes had flat-lined.  They were seeing the cost of everything from health care to sending their kids to college going up. Job growth was the weakest of any economic expansion between 2001 and 2008 since World War II.  The pace was slower than it’s been over the last year.

So these policies of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, of stripping away regulations that protect consumers, running up a record surplus to a record deficit -- those policies finally culminated in the worst financial crisis we’ve had since the Great Depression.  And for 19 months, what we have done is steadily worked to avoid a depression, to take an economy that was contracting rapidly and making it grow again; a situation where we were losing 750,000 jobs a month, and now we’ve had eight consecutive months of private sector job growth; and made investments that are going to strengthen the economy over the long term.