Romney launches an apology tour

Romney first charged that Obama kicked off his presidency with an apology tour on June 1, 2009, and he has never stopped repeating that lie. What he meant was that Obama, in his addresses to various allies and sometime adversaries, often acknowledged some fault in past American conduct as prelude to acknowledging fault on the other side and defending overall American conduct, interests and values (see Politifact link below).  For example, in his address to the Arab world in Cairo on June 4, 2009 Obama cited legitimate causes for resentment of the U.S. and the west in Islamic countries:

More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

Obama girds for 1993...

Responding to my close reading of Obama's outline of the nation's fiscal challenges in the Peter Baker interview, a reader protests that based on my quote selection, "it seems as if obama will cut nothing. which means a MASSIVE tax increase on everyone. which will kill him politically, deservedly."

Well, if "massive" means the fiscal equivalent of rolling tax rates back to those of the Clinton era, which would take care of most of our budget woes, the reader is probably right. Here's how I read Obama's read:


The single most important "cut" is to get control of medical inflation. Obama devoted the first two years of his presidency to doing that and went to the mat for significant cost controls in the PPA (cf. Larry Summers). Next up on that front: a strong public option.  Government control of healthcare prices is the only way to keep a lid on them. Every other wealthy country gives the government that power. You'll never get that from the Republicans.

Next is defense spending. Gates is doing all that is humanly possible in the US today to keep a lid on growth,  more than anyone else could do. Obama has gotten creative trying to wind down our wars. We don't know whether he'll succeed, but but there will be no serious force reduction -- personnel counts for the bulk of military spending -- until our commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq are greatly reduced. Long-term, the U.S. needs to gradually divest its hegemon role.

Social security is a relative bite on the ass. It's not in terrible shape. A sane result from the deficit commission would be to tweak it a bit, raising the FICA cap, maybe trimming the COLA formula (though big reductions there would drastically reduce its ability to provide a comfortable retirement to most Americans). Kevin Drum outlines the options nicely: