Still Kicking: Nancy Pelosi

Ever since Scott Brown's election on Jan. 19 seemingly blew the Democratic caucus into pieces, Nancy Pelosi has been a rock. While acknowledging some tactical uncertainty in the immediate aftermath, she never wavered in her assurance that Democrats would find a way to pass comprehensive reform.

On Jan. 21, she caused some anguish by acknowledging that she did not have the votes to pass the Senate bill as is. She did glance at the possibility of piecemeal reform. But the dominant chord even then was that a path to meaningful reform would be found. Note the refusal to panic:

"There's a recognition that there's a foundation in that bill [the Senate bill] that's important. So one way or another those areas of agreement that we have will have to be advanced, whether it's by passing the Senate bill with any changes that can be made, or just taking [pieces of it]," Pelosi said.

"We have to get a bill passed -- we know that. That's a predicate that we all subscribe to."

When will that happen? Who knows!

"We're in no rush," Pelosi said.

On Jan. 28, she took heart from Obama's defense of comprehensive reform in the State of the Union address and responded to his call to Congress to get it passed:

“You go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole-vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in. But we’re going to get health care reform passed for the American people.”

Pascrell on board for health care reform?

An update on my recalcitrant Congressman, Bill Pascrell, Democrat of District 8 in New Jersey, who told Politico and Fox News in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election that Democrats should scale back their health care plans and just pass scraps of reform, and that he was working on rounding up colleagues intent on doing just that. Back then, he pronounced both the House and Senate bills dead. On March 2, in an open letter to the President, he published a weak excuse for a reform package   (however worthy some component parts may be) - tort reform, a patient's bill of rights, antittrust exemption repeal.

A week ago Friday, Pascrell's aide told me that he "doesn't like the Senate bill" -- e.g., the excise tax, the relatively stingy subsidies. Today he told Politico, "I don't think we should simply assume Mr. Reid has 51 votes...I don't know what the hell is going on over there in the Senate." Apparently he's of the school of House Democrats who believe, as Dick Durbin put it yesterday,  "The Republicans are our opponents, but the Senate is the enemy."

But it would appear that he's on board. David Dayen's whip count at Firedoglake, which identifies all known Democratic no's and maybe's by name, does not name him, and so has him in the definite yes category by default. An Organizing for America email last week asked members in this area to call Pascrell and "thank him" for voting for the House HCR bill in November; there was no direct mention that he might be squishy now.

Today, Pascrell's his aide told me that he "needs to see what's in the bill"  and remains uncommitted. When I cited Dayen's count, though, and said that I assumed that he would vote for the bill in the end, she acknowledged that that's probably what will happen. 

I took two whacks at Pascrell in op-eds in local media, here and here.

Durbin to House Democrats: We are not the enemy

As the reconciliation drama has unfolded in the wake of the Massachusetts Senate election, I have been repeatedly astonished at evidence that many House Democrats seem more concerned about getting rolled by the Senate than about getting rolled by Republicans -- as if an HCR bill that looks more like the Senate bill than they would like would be a worse defeat than failing to pass comprehensive reform at all.

Today, on Meet the Press, Dick Durbin articulated this sentiment, put it in historical context, and made a bid to defuse it:

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL):  Tom, when I served in the House, we used to say in the House Democratic Caucus, "The Republicans are our opponents, but the Senate is the enemy." So I can understand the built-in skepticism and lack of trust.  But I'll tell you this, we're in the process of actually contacting every single Democratic senator.  When Nancy Pelosi goes before her House Democratic Caucus, it will be with the solid assurance that when reconciliation comes over to the Senate side, we're going to pass it.

Netanyahu's "weakness"

A casual observer might ascribe the the Israeli government's announced approval of 1600 new housing units in East Jerusalem in the midst of Biden's visit to Israel as a sign of the Netanyahu government's aggressive contempt for U.S. attempts to influence Israeli policy (notwithstanding Netanyahu's claim to have been blindsided).

That's not how Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni -- defeated by Netanyahu by a razor-thin margin in the last election -- is casting it. Haaretz reports:

Opposition leader and Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni on Sunday cast her own criticism of Netanyahu regarding the recent row, saying his weakness to his coalition partners was costing the government its stability.

"The coalition agreement is not a substitute for a set path and a vision," Livni said, adding that "we have a prime minister who does not know what he wants and this weakness is leading to a political landslide."

"Israel is paying the price for the fact that her government is not making decisions and it will continue to pay for it," Livni added.

"It is not God's decree for the world to be against us," said the opposition leader. "We can change the reality, but for this we need a prime minister who has a clear policy and strategic path, who doesn't place national security in the hands of [Interior Minister] Eli Yishai.

I feel very exhilarated...

when Nancy Pelosi is exhilarated:

Again, I feel very exhilarated by a Caucus meeting that we had this morning in terms of the questions that Members have. We spent a good deal of time on the substance, but then some on the process as well. We stand ready to stay as long as it takes to pass the bill. I think Members are eager to pass the bill. And again, it won't be long before we'll be making a real difference in the lives of the American people.

There's been a lot of yearning for Barack Obama to be Lyndon Johnson. Has it occurred to anyone that Nancy Pelosi is Lyndon Johnson?

Michael Mukasey's bait-and-switch: 'al Qaeda 7' for Yoo and Bybee

Turning to the op-ed page of the WSJ on Wednesday -- always a dangerous enterprise if you support the rule of law  -- I noted with satisfaction an op-ed by former attorney general Michael Mukasey titled, "Why You Shouldn't Judge a Lawyer by His Clients." It appeared that Mukasey was joining other Bush Administration attorneys and principled conservatives in denouncing the vicious smears of Liz Cheney against Justice Department lawyers and other attorneys who have defended Guantanamo detainees or otherwise worked to uphold the rule of law in the treatment of detainees.

While Mukasey's piece does defend those who defend "clients that were or became unpopular," the piece is a bait-and-switch, built on a false and dangerous equivalence that is sure to become a Republican talking point.  After noting perfunctorily that Bernie Madoff's lawyer was reviled, Mukasey turns to his true passion:

More recently, we've witnessed a campaign to impose professional discipline on two former Justice Department lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, for legal positions they took as to whether interrogation techniques devised and proposed by others were lawful—a campaign that also featured casual denunciations of them as purveyors of torture.

After then noting the denunciation of Justice Department attorneys who in private practice represented terrorist suspects or upheld their rights, Mukasey makes his move:

A whip for Rep. Pascrell on HCR

My own Congressman, Democrat Bill Pascrell of New Jersey's 8th District, publicly opposed comprehensive health care reform in the immediate aftermath of the Mass. election and still has not committed to voting  for the Senate bill and reconciliation package.  In the piece below, running in today's News-Record of Maplewood and South Orange (NJ), I ask my neighbors to push Pascrell into the yes column:

If You Support Health Care Reform, Call Bill Pascrell

In a speech presenting his final health care reform proposal on March 3, President Obama laid it on the line.  It’s time to pass comprehensive reform, he told Congress and the country:

I, therefore, ask leaders in both houses of Congress to finish their work and schedule a vote in the next few weeks.  From now until then, I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.  And I urge every American who wants this reform to make their voice heard as well --- every family, every business, every patient, every doctor, every nurse, every physician’s assistant.  Make your voice heard. 

If you live in New Jersey’s 8^th Congressional District (covering much of South Orange and Maplewood) and you want to answer the President’s call, then talk to Representative Bill Pascrell -- who has been running the other way.   

When the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof Senate majority in the Jan. 19 Massachusetts election, supporters of  comprehensive health care reform quickly realized that there is just one viable path: have the House pass the Senate bill, which the Senate passed with a 60-vote majority in December, while negotiating to accommodate some House goals  through a process known as reconciliation, which allows budget-related legislation to pass the Senate with a bare majority.  The President’s health care proposal consists of a package of such fixes, such as limiting the excise tax on expensive plans and improving subsidies for middle class buyers of insurance.

In late January, Rep. Pascrell was having none of this. He told Politico that he is “tired” of the health care reform process and wants to end it. “The people in Massachusetts sent a clear message,” he said. “If we didn’t get it in New Jersey or Virginia, we should’ve gotten it, certainly, Tuesday.” He indicated that he wanted to scrap comprehensive reform and pass whatever scraps of reform can garner a few Republican votes.

Trouble with the children of Israel

During the years when peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians were a live hope, I recall periodic bloodcurdling stories about the indoctrination of children on the West Bank, inciting hatred of Israel and antisemitism.  A far-from-disinterested but well documented precis (dated 2001) is here.

Now comes disturbing news from the other side of the divide -- not of systematic indoctrination, but of a progressive hardening of attitudes after decades of war. From the Jerusalem Post:

A new Ma’agar Mohot poll has produced somewhat disturbing findings regarding the attitudes of Jewish Israeli schoolchildren about Arab Israelis.

According to the poll, taken among 536 15-18-year-olds, 50 percent of Jewish Israeli schoolchildren believe that Arab Israelis should not be granted rights equal to their Jewish counterparts.

Furthermore, 56 percent of Jewish Israeli schoolchildren surveyed said Arab Israelis should be prevented from running for Knesset, while 50% of the Jewish youngsters who defined themselves as religious said they believe the “Death to Arabs” slogan was legitimate.

The Minister for Minority affairs expresses distress, but also unwittingly frames the perhaps unresolvable paradox of a democracy that places a premium on ethnic/religious identity: 

....Avishai Braverman called the results of the survey “most severe.”

“I believe that it’s the result of ignorance and a campaign of incitement that has been with us a long time,” he said, calling for “meaningful” educational activities to allow the different ethnic communities in Israel to better understand each other. “We came here to set up a Jewish state, but it’s also a state for all its citizens."

Well, that's an interesting idea, but I don't know whether people in the region will go for it.

Zogby: Voters' "hearts" are with the Dems on health care reform

The results of extended campaigns to sway public opinion such as Obama's advocacy for comprehensive health care reform from the day after the Massachusetts election forward can take a long time to come into focus. But since mid-February -- a few days after Obama proposed the health care summit -- the polling gap between those who say they're opposed to the Democrats' health care reform effort and those in favor has narrowed steadily to a virtual dead heat at present.

And there are interesting undercurrents. Zogby polled just before the summit and then a week after and did not found no movement in the percentages of people who said they were for or against Obama's plan. But they did find two surprises. Zogby, sharing a byline in today's FT with Bush Administration assistant secretary of defense for health affairs S. Ward Cascells, reports:

First, we were surprised to find Americans exactly evenly split between Mr Obama’s plan and that of the Republicans. Well aware that the way the question is asked can determine the result, in our surveys just before and after the summit, we used Mr Obama’s name and listed the main provisions of both plans. In previous surveys we had asked respondents to choose between the House or Senate Democrats’ plan and no bill, or starting over, and they always preferred no bill, or starting over. [snip]

Ted Williams advises Dems on HCR

Word comes that Jim Bunning has a message for House Democrats: beware passing the Senate health care bill, because the reconcliation "sidecar" could fail, in which case the unaltered Senate bill will become law. That means voting for the unweakened excise tax, relatively stingy subsidies for middle class families, etc.

House Democrats will doubtless be touched that Jim Bunning has their best interests at heart.  Presumably, too, they won't note that the odds of that Senate bill will pass the House and that no reconciliation bill will also pass both chambers are approximately equal to the odds that all 41 Republicans will vote in favor of the reconciliation bill.

If House Democrats need a psyche-up (and they do, they do!), they should take one from the late great Ted Williams, who knew how to deal with Bunning.  I'm surely not the only observer who recalls this scene from Jim Bouton's baseball memoir Ball Four every time Bunning comes snarling into the national news:

Ted Williams, when he was still playing, would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there.

He'd go into the cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, "My name is Ted fucking Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball."

He'd swing and hit a line drive.
"Jesus H Christ Himself couldn't get me out."

And he'd hit another.

Then he'd say, "Here comes Jim Bunning. Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit slider of his."

Wham!

"He doesn't really think he's gonna get me out with that shit."


Blam!

"I'm Ted fucking Williams.",

Pow!

Nancy Pelosi, you're on deck...

The sun never sets on the British blazer

Apropos of nothing, I enjoyed this opener to a column by the FT's Michael Skapinker:

One of the curiosities of travelling from the UK to Australia is that you spend more than 24 hours flying over evermore remote and exotic locations only to emerge, exhausted and aching, in a place so immediately familiar. The similarities are everywhere: the cricket grounds, the striped school blazers, the newspaper worries about knife crime.

The rest of the article is well worth reading, too. It's a cautionary tale: a stimulus program offering people incentives to insulate their homes was a major balls-up.  Lots of substandard work, creating fire and electrocution hazards.

"Enemy Belligerent" lawmakers: McCain and Lieberman

The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010, a legislative monstrosity produced by John McCain and Joe Lieberman, goes further than any Bush-era legislation in abrogating the core principle of Anglo-American justice: that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. While the bill is deplorable in every detail -- it denies terrorist suspects their Miranda rights and codifies indefinite detention without trial -- one particular provision effectively ends the presumption of innocence for all of us. That provision codifies the President's right to define any criteria he chooses to deliver any individual into the legal Twilight Zone defined by the bill.

The bill authorizes the President to establish an "interagency team" to make a "preliminary determination of the status" of an individual "suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means in violation of the laws of war, or of purposely and materially supporting such hostilities."  That team will determine whether the suspect shall be accorded a preliminary designation as a "high value detainee" (a.k.a. "unprivileged enemy belligerent" -- the bill makes no coherent distinction between these terms).  A final status determination is to be made by the Attorney General and Secretary of Defense; the President can only weigh in if these two disagree.  Incredibly, the entire procedure from capture to final status determination is to be completed within 48 hours. 

The provision that removes all discretionary limits to this secret determination of status is in the Criteria for Designation of Individuals as High-Value Detainees. That section creates an initial impression that such "determinations" are subject to the rule of law by laying out specific criteria, beginning with "(A) The potential threat the individual poses for an attack on civilians..." (B) the potential threat the individual poses to United States military personnel..." etc. But the final criterion (E) zooms to infinity: it is simply "Such other matters as the President considers appropriate. " 

The name of the game is the finger game...

The Times has an A1 story coming out tomorrow about "fingers pointing" at David Axelrod for the President's perceived communications failures. I guess we've turned the page from the clutch of stories blaming Rahm Emanuel for the alleged failure to maintain Camelot, which in its turn succeeded roughly a year's worth of stories blaming Timothy Geithner.


This predictable sequence reminds me of a dimly remembered shock from early childhood. In an afterschool program for (I think, roughly) 5 year olds, our little group generally had one member designated, whether by common consent or the acclamation of a self-appointed opinion leader or two, "the dummy."  I seem to recall accepting it as part of the natural order of things that someone held this honorific, and that it wasn't me. Until the day when a beefy loudmouth announced to a standing circle, "X isn't the dummy any more!" He pointed at me. "He is! In soccer, before you can throw the ball in bounds, he's kicked it out of bounds!"

My memory is that this charge was completely fabricated (or imagined). Whether I vigorously defended myself, stood gaping in stunned silence, or managed something in between I can't recall. I'm pretty sure that the title didn't stick for more than a minute or two. I wish I could say that I'd stood up for a prior or subsequent designated dummy, but I can't recall that either.  All I know is that the story comes to mind whenever the scapegoating finger makes its mindless progress through a series of public figures.

As for the administration's alleged failures of communication, strategy and policy: of course there are many. At the same time, the unemployment rate is 9.7% and the President's approval rating hovers at 50%. Reagan's approval rating at the one year mark was essentially identical -- 49% -- after a year in which unemployment had climbed from 7.5% to 8.5%  By December 1982, unemployment had spiked to 10.8% and Reagan hit his polling nadir, 35%.  Bottom line: the administration's "failures" as assessed by public opinion are almost entirely a function of the economy Obama inherited. That will not be true forever, but it's true now. And luck will play a large part in future fluctuations -- if not, ultimately, in his performance over the long haul, and future generations' perceptions of it.

Tom DeLay undercuts Republican high dudgeon

As Republicans kick up the histrionics about "back-room deals" in the health care reform bill, it's refreshing to revisit a September 2009 forecast/confession by none other than Tom Delay, perhaps the most uninhibited abuser of Congressional norms in modern history:

"The Democrats will do exactly what we always did, rewrite the bill over and over until they give all the members what they need to get to 218 votes. The Senate will do the same thing." It will, he predicts, be a straight party-line vote, and "maybe a few Republicans voting for it, but not many" (my emphasis).

The irony is that there were actually relatively few single-state or district-specific giveaways in the Senate and House HCR bills, and the most notorious Senate carve-outs are being purged via the reconciliation patch. As ever, the Republicans are shameless, and the Democrats easily shamed.

Update: DeLay will be on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. Somehow I doubt he'll be quite as candid as he was in September.

A muff on the Mitt watch

It's fair to assume that whatever the post-2006 Mitt Romney says about a given issue will contradict something he's said or done on the same issue in an earlier incarnation.  Nonetheless, Steve Benen misfires somewhat in this round of Mitt Hypocrisy Watch:

"The president has been disingenuous trying to lay this at the feet of the health insurance companies," he said. "Nobody believes that health care is expensive in America because of insurance companies. Health care is expensive because we use a lot of health care treatment."

Yes, Mitt Romney wants to a) defend universally-reviled health insurance companies as they jack up everyone's premiums while reaping huge profits; and b) thinks health care would be a whole lot cheaper if we'd all stop getting treatment for our ailments.

I'm tempted to ask him, by way of a follow-up, why health care costs in the United States are vastly more expensive than any other country on the planet -- per capita -- even as people in other countries seek treatments for their ailments, but Romney would probably just pretend reality doesn't exist and change the subject.

Actually, health care is more expensive in the U.S. than in any other wealthy country partly because of administrative and marketing costs imposed by for-profit insurance companies, and partly because doctors prescribe and patients demand a lot of unnecessary treatment, but mainly because all payers in the United States pay doctors and hospitals far more per treatment than payers in other countries.

Our system is hugely wasteful -- myriad insurance companies each with their own coverage rules and payment schedules jack up providers' administrative costs and therefore the price of treatment. But at the same time, insurance companies lack the pricing power that governments in other countries arrogate to themselves (including countries like France, Germany, and Japan which use private but nonprofit insurers) and so in large part they just pass through the inflated prices that doctors and hospitals are able to charge.

The worst damage imposed by our insurance delivery system is in our failure to impose uniform coverage rules -- what is covered, what is not, how much insurers are allowed to charge. That can't be fixed without an individual mandate to widen the risk pool. And our system won't truly approach the effectiveness of that of other industrialized countries until the government assumes price control over treatment.

Reconciling the press to reconciliation

In the weeks since the Massachusetts election, Jonathan Chait and Ezra Klein have quite rightly been driven bats by news accounts that fail to make clear that the Democratic leadership is not trying to pass a complete health reform package through reconciliation, but rather to use the process only to amend the Senate bill. They have both spelled out the distinction clearly enough for a child to understand more than once.

Schooled by Chait, Klein, Jonathan Cohn and the sources they link to --particularly a short  piece by Brookings' Henry Aaron finding that using reconciliation to adjust the funding and spending in the Senate bill is precisely in line with the process's intended purpose --  I have been on a bit of a campaign, writing directly to reporters and editors when articles appear online that fail to spell out that reconciliation will be used only to patch the Senate bill (if hcr passes at all).  These letters have so far induced three national and international publications to clarify and amplify their explanations.

In addition, I took Factcheck.org to task (in a blog post and letter) for obscuring the distinction by citing an April 2009 Brookings paper exploring the possible use of reconciliation to pass the entire HCR passage to imply that the reconciliation 'patch' now contemplated would be "the most ambitious use to date of this filibuster-avoiding maneuver."  In its "mailbag," Factcheck has acknowledged the point -- and so has Brookings:

FactCheck.org responds: We spoke to Thomas Mann, co-author of the Brookings/American Enterprise Institute report we cited, and he agrees. "We argued last year that reconciliation legitimately could be used for health reform, but that it would be ambitious, difficult and partial, given the constraints of the process," Mann told us. "Its much more limited use this year, adding amendments after the bill itself has passed following a successful cloture vote, is very modest and unquestionably legitimate." We have updated the story accordingly, and Brookings plans to update its article within a few days.   

Meanwhile, as Obama has removed any doubt that he wants the Democrats to move forward with the House passing the Senate bill with a reconciliation patch, stories that fail to clarify how reconciliation may be used are getting much rarer.

You'd think Obama wrote the damned bill

Not to be subtle, here's the keynote of Obama's re-presentation of the Democrats' health care plan, boldfaced below.

Now, the proposal I put forward gives Americans more control over their health insurance and their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable...

 Essentially, my proposal would change three things about the current health care system... 

Second, my proposal would give uninsured individuals and small business owners the same kind of choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves...

Senate HCR bill today; public option tomorrow

Jonathan Bernstein provides crucial perspective on the public option: it is a battle that can be won another day, if only Democrats have the courage to win now by passing the bill that's currently on the table. Commenting on Blanche Lincoln's primary challenger Bill Halter's support for the p.o., Bernstein (guest-blogging on Andrew Sullivan's Dish) writes:

I expect virtually every Democrat in contested primaries during this and (if still not enacted) the next campaign cycle to support the public option, at least in any district in which Democrats have a chance to win.  The main exceptions will be incumbents such as Lincoln who already voted against it...and I won't be shocked if she switches.  In a Democratic primary, I don't see any potential downside.  Liberals love it, and for better or worse Democrats don't believe that it will be a general election liability.
 
The other part of this is that the public option should be eligible for a reconciliation bill, so it won't take sixty Democrats to get it done.

 In a comment string on Kos last week I made a similar point, minus the perspective on the effect of primary challenges:

I don't think putting the public option into the reconciliation patch is genuinely on the table - nor should it be. Rockefeller had it right. Putting it in would knock out the House blue dogs who might come aboard because the Senate bill is more conservative than the House's, offsetting some of those who might vote no because the Senate bill weakened the Stupak abortion prohibition.  I'd like to see a strong PO passed through reconciliation at a later date - perhaps when the pendulum swings back toward Dems in 2012 or 14.  The exchanges won't be up until 2014 anyway.  Better to get the framework up -- it can be jiggered through reconciliation forever after. Per TR Reid's book The Healing of America, country's with effective health care systems, like France and Germany, are forever tinkering with them.

Obama is right to tweak the bill rightward now to increase its chances of squeaking through. As always, he takes a long view, and he has been consistent from the start about the "core elements of the bill" that are interdependent and that provide a foundation for expanded access and cost control.  The public option might vastly strengthen the new system on both counts, but it's at the top of second-tier priorities. It can be added later.

Obama bends over backwards, and does not yield

Obama's post-summit bid for a comprehensive health care bill, unveiled in a letter to the Congressional leadership, extends his paradoxical  approach to Republican intransigence: bend over backwards/do not yield.  That is, keep suggesting -- and trying to showcase -- the meme that Repubicans can be right at the margins but are missing the big picture.

The White House blog stresses that the President is proposing to include "even more Republican ideas" (!) and the revised plan incorporates several proposals voiced by Republicans at the summit. Yet at the same time, Obama's letter insists "that piecemeal reform is not the best way to effectively reduce premiums, end the exclusion of people with pre-existing conditions or offer Americans the security of knowing that they will never lose coverage, even if they lose or change jobs." In other words, the damn bill -- a blend of the bills passed by House and Senate Democrats -- will pass. 

1995 redux

Today was a 1995 flashback, with Jim Bunning shutting down core government functions, sneering, growling and flipping the bird to a reporter, while Jim Kyle pronounced that unemployment benefits make people unwilling to work (cf. banker Potter in in It's a Wonderful Life: home mortgages breed "a discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty, working class"). What Democrat doesn't smell overreach?  On the same day, an IRS building is evacuated and a Hazmat team called after a suspicious substance is found -- two weeks after an anti-government Kamikaze flew a plane into another IRS building.

Today's apparent attack may have been illusory - the latest report claims that the substance in question was not hazardous -- and Joseph Stack's paranoid rage was politically heterodox.   But one needn't tag these assaults -- or pranks, or even mirages -- as coherent political acts to catch a wave of Gingrich-era deja vu.


In April 1995, the Gingrich Congress was in full flush of its "First 100 Days" when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City -- and Clinton reasserted himself as Consoler-in-Chief and started talking about the fires of anti-government rage stoked by hateful talk radio. A few months later came the government shutdown,  when Clinton faced down Gingrich, Dole et al and forced them to back off what he called "cruel" cuts to Medicare,  Medicaid, education, the earned income tax credit, etc. (helped by Gingrich's public boast that he'd shut down the government because Clinton snubbed him and Dole on Air Force One, seating them at the back). Clinton's poll numbers soared in 1995 and basically never came down.  


Of course, Clinton only regained his moxie after failing to reform health care and losing the House and Senate.  He was never able to pass major legislation thereafter. Is it too much to hope that Obama has suffered his Dunkirk early?  That right now the latest bout of anti-government fever will break, Democrats will breathe and pass health care reform, and go on to weather normal midterm losses?