McCain's economic bridge to nowhere

The Wall Street Journal's Bob Davis, reporting on an interview with John McCain focused on his economic platform, does a nice job highlighting multiple inconsistencies -- not to say an overall incoherence -- without any explicit diss. Repeatedly, Davis presents McCain's claims against an understated backdrop of inconvenient truths.

Among the highlighted lacunae:

Social security reform: "the Arizona senator says he still backs a system of private retirement accounts that President Bush pushed unsuccessfully, and disowned details of a Social Security proposal on his campaign Web site." That is, the website calls for a plan similar to Hillary Clinton's, creating personal investment "supplementing" social security, without touching the structure of the existing program. That's a switch from his 2000 campaign, when McCain called for diverting a portion of social security taxes to fund private accounts, as Bush tried to do in 2005. McCain's chief economic aide, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, chalks up the change to the runup of the deficit in the Bush years.

But, Davis reports, "asked about the apparent change in position in the interview, Sen. McCain said he hadn't made one. 'I'm totally in favor of personal savings accounts," he says. When reminded that his Web site says something different, he says he will change the Web site. (As of Sunday night, he hadn't.) ' As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it -- along the lines that President Bush proposed."

This repudiation highlights the article's subtext: that McCain claims to be a deficit hawk but avoids any serious attempt to make his numbers add up - that is, to deal with the deficit. Which brings us to self-repudiation #2:

Bush tax cuts and more: As is well known, McCain voted against Bush's massive tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 but now opposes letting them expire. Now he wants to pile on with a cut in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% at a cost of $100 billion per year, and elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax, at a cost unspecified in the Journal article but estimated by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center at least $800 billion over the next decade (Aviva Aron Dine, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities). "In all," Davis reports, "his tax-cutting proposals could cost about $400 billion a year, according to estimates of the impact of different tax cuts by CBO and the McCain campaign. The cost will make it difficult for him to achieve his goal of balancing the budget by the end of his first term."

Offsetting savings? Davis makes it clear that they're pitifully inadequate:

To show he can control spending, Sen. McCain cites his long record as a spending hawk, who battles sweetheart deals between the Pentagon and defense contractors, as well as projects that lawmakers of both parties cram into appropriations bills -- "earmarks," in budget lingo.

Congressional earmarks total $18 billion a year, according to the Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington, D.C., research group -- and each has a member of Congress who will ferociously fight to keep that spending going. Mr. Holtz-Eakin, the McCain adviser, says that earmarks actually cost $60 billion a year, counting programs that started in earlier years and get funded year after year.

Another source of spending cuts eyed by the McCain campaign is a White House hit list of underperforming or redundant programs. But again, the numbers are relatively small -- $18 billion annually -- compared to the cost of Sen. McCain's tax plans, and the programs include housing loans, education grants, and water projects popular with Congress.

The accompanying interview highlights the absurdity. Asked by Davis, "are you worried your numbers don't add up?", McCain responds:

If you just look at two spending bills that the president signed into law, there's $35 billion just in those two bills [that could be cut]. I saved the taxpayers over $6 billion on one Air Force tanker deal. I'm not worried about being able to find savings in government.

I love the use of brackets above - $35 billion [that could be cut] -- if the President got every cut he claimed to want in two bills totaling several hundred billions in spending. That's in a budget with a current deficit of over $400 billion. Tack McCain's $400 billion in new tax cuts onto that, and then take a guess at the cost of maintaining over 100,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely.

Slow Stimulus: To get the economy going, Davis emphasizes that McCain "said he might have 'a couple of fireside chats with the American people.'" Beyond that, nothing -- except extending the Bush tax cuts and adding his own:

While other candidates were scrambling in January to put together stimulus plans to boost flagging consumer spending, he proposed long-term tax cuts which could take years to come into law. "In the shorter term, if you somehow told American businesses and families, 'Look, you're not going to experience a tax increase in 2010,' I think that's a pretty good short-term measure," he says.

The Bush tax cuts have already been justified, first by the surplus of 2000, then by the recession of 2001, then by the recovery of 2003-07. Now McCain is tacking on the anticipated recession of 2008. Here we go again: massive tax cuts are the cure for every economic slowdown, and the cause of all economic growth.

Pat Buchanan recently said that McCain running our foreign policy "could make Cheney look like Gandhi." With this deadpan presentation, Bob Davis makes it clear that McCain running the economy could make Bush look like Alexander Hamilton.

Related posts:
Obama and Clinton share a pander on trade
Obama channels Edwards in Janesville

Obama and Clinton share a pander on trade

Obama and Clinton appear to be offering parallel panders to working class voters in their promises to change the tax code to discourage job offshoring. Here are their promises:

Obama in Janesville WI , Feb. 13:

I'll pass the Patriot Employer Act that I've been fighting for ever since I ran for the Senate - we will end the tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas, and we will give those breaks to companies who create good jobs with decent wages right here in America.

Clinton, Youngstown OH, Feb. 19:

Let's get real about keeping jobs right here in Ohio and America where they belong. As president, I will send a loud and clear message to any company shipping jobs overseas. If you take jobs away from the families of Youngstown, you'll pay a price because when I am president, you will never again be able to use our tax dollars to help outsource our jobs.

I can find no specifics on either the Obama or Clinton websites about how the candidates would end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. Obama's Patriot Employer Act works the other end of the equation, providing a tax credit equal to 1% of taxable income to companies that, among other things, "invest in American jobs, by maintaining or increasing the number of full-time workers in America relative to the number of full-time workers outside of America AND by maintaining corporate headquarters in America if the company has ever been headquartered in America" (Obama press release, Aug 2 '07). That's an incentive for desired behavior without reference to closing any currently existing tax breaks for "companies who ship our jobs overseas."

According to Factcheck.org, both candidates are targeting "a feature of the U.S. tax code that allows domestic companies to defer taxes on 'unrepatriated income.' In other words, revenue that companies earn through their overseas subsidiaries goes untaxed by the IRS as long as it stays off the company’s U.S. books. "

Does this mean that both candidates would revive something like John Kerry's 2004 proposal to limit the "deferral" of unrepatriated income described above? The Kerry proposal would have only allowed "deferral" when the profits are earned by producing and selling in the country where the subsidiary is based. In return, Kerry would have cut the US corporate tax rate from 35% to 33.25% -- an important aid to development, since US corporate taxes are higher than those of most competitors, including developed as well as undeveloped countries.

According to Factcheck.org, " economists, including left-leaning ones, do not agree that eliminating this provision will bring an end to off-shoring." For one thing, tax policy only marginally affects decisions about where to locate production. To the extent that tax incentives do operate, Gary Clyde Clyde Hufbauer and Paul Grieco of the nonpartisan Peterson Institute argued in depth in an April 2004 paper that the incentives in Kerry's plan were skewed and that the tax restructuring would not check job outsourcing. Here's the gist of their critique:

Relocating production in the United States...is unlikely to be the central response. Instead, MNCs [multinational corporations] would explore alternative ways to avoid the higher US tax burden and might well sell their operations abroad to foreign-based MNCs...under Kerry's plan, moreover, foreign-based MNCs would gain further tax advantages over US companies in worldwide markets--giving them a leg up in future expansion.

Among the likely workarounds to the new tax law, Hufbauer and Grieco predicted:

...they might sell their entire output to foreign-owned wholesale firms in the host country. Those firms would then handle the distribution to other countries, including the United States....[a foreign subsidiary, or CFC ] might price its out-of-country sales to related firms at bargain basement prices and claim the bulk of its earnings was derived from in-country sales. If all other avenues were closed off, then 'corporate inversion' would represent the nuclear option. By moving corporate headquarters overseas, former US parent firms could entirely escape the US tax net for their non-US operations...[or] the MNC might simply sell a majority of its CFC shares to a foreign partner. Once non-US parties own 51 percent of the foreign subsidiary, it ceases to be a CFC...and thus escapes the US tax net.

To the extent that Kerry's plan did succeed in driving production back to the U.S., it would place US multinationals at a disadvantage:

US MNCs...account for only one-fourth of world foreign direct investment in countries other than the United States. Plenty of competitors are willing and able to take their place if, for tax reasons, US-based MNCs are no longer able to competitively produce goods and services abroad for sale in the United States or third-country markets.

Interestingly, Obama's website includes a throwaway line that points toward a remedy that Hufbauer and Grieco recommend in place of Kerry's plan -- though the odds of getting it done are probably vanishingly small. Obama's Plan to Strengthen the Economy includes this promise:

Obama will also pressure the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and nontariff barriers on U.S. exports.

That promise appears to be addressed at an imbalance in WTO rules that, according to Hufbauer and Grieco, severely disadvantage U.S. exports relative to foreign companies selling goods in the U.S. It's this:

Under current WTO rules, US exporters must pay on importing nations' value added tax (VAT), but foreign exporters selling the US market are exempted from their home-country VAT. WTO rules do not permit the United States to levy its corporate tax on exports. Correcting this archaic distinction between indirect and direct taxes....would significantly promote US production and jobs.

Good luck, though, getting a major rules change favorable to the US through the WTO.

Related post:
Obama gets down to tax brass

Caldwell captures core Clinton-Obama contrast

Christopher Caldwell, honing in on What Obama owes to Reagan, has a dead-on diagnosis of the difference in approach to politics between Clinton and Obama. He hones in on a paradox: Clinton's positions are more centrist, but Obama captures more independents and Republicans. "Their biggest difference," Caldwell writes,

is in their attitude towards the US electorate. Voters sense that that is everything. They are right. The non-ideological differences between Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are vast, possibly greater than those between either of them and the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain...

Mrs Clinton views voters as either committed friends or foes. There are good people on one side. On the other, depending on the rhetorical mood she is in, is "the vast rightwing conspiracy" or "the special interests"...

Mr Obama views the electorate's affections and affiliations as changeable - at least at certain pivotal times. He believes independents and Republicans will rally to his cause, and many have done so.

Caldwell rightly points out that Obama's bid to coopt the center and build a "working majority" owes much to Reagan: "To read Mr Obama's political autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, is to see an interest in Reagan that borders on fascination. 'I understood his appeal,' Mr Obama writes." This usefully reminds us that Obama's notorious hat-tip to Reagan in an interview with the The Reno Gazette-Journal in January did not come out of a void. Obama clearly has internalized what Reagan accomplished politically and how he accomplished it:

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they 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. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

Caldwell points out that Obama, like Reagan, is trying to move the center rather than move to the center:

Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980 by attracting disaffected Democrats in millions. They did not jump to Reagan because Mr Carter was a particularly leftwing Democrat. Nor did Reagan appeal by watering his positions down into centrist mush. He ran as an unapologetic conservative, just as Mr Obama has run as an unapologetic man of the left. But the revolutionary coalition that Reagan formed was less ideological than he was. Reagan won because he solicited the whole nation's support at a time when lesser politicians mistook their parties' battles for the country's.

Obama is far from alone in sensing that the time is ripe now to move the center left. As David Frum memorably put it in the FT, "If they eat right, exercise and wear seatbelts, today's 20-somethings will be voting against George W. Bush deep into the 2060s." That's why Obama's invocation of "the fierce urgency of now" is no New Age mush (contra Caldwell's FT Comment cohort Gideon Rachman), but rather a very specific argument that the electorate is ready to be moved left if the case is made frankly, forcefully, and without demonizing the opposition.

One fascinating aspect of this election is the right's soft spot for Obama. Many Reagan Revolution alumni recognize the mirror image and respect what Obama is trying to accomplish. The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, writing on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page of all places, traced the parallels earlier this week, noting that "Throughout his campaign, Reagan fought off charges that his candidacy was built more on optimism than policies," and that Obama faces the same charge, though both laid out clear and far-from-centrist agendas.

Like Reagan, Obama casts his noncentrist agenda as a corrective. That's the opportunity of the moment. Just as Obama acknowledges that in 1980 Americans felt that government had grown bloated, so now even many conservatives are hung over by the results of triple-branch Republican rule. That leaves an opening for Obama to cast his tax and spending policies as a matter of restoring "balance" and "fairness," as he did while laying out his economic agenda in Janesville, Wisconsin:

when opportunity is uneven or unequal - it is our responsibility to restore balance, and fairness, and keep that promise alive for the next generation. That is the responsibility we face right now, and that is the responsibility I intend to meet as President of the United States.

More broadly, in Lorain, Ohio on Feb. 24, he cast excessive income inequality as unamerican, and unity behind an agenda of strengthening unions, taxing outsourcing and greenhouse gas emissions, and spending on infrastructure and alternative energy as fidelity to democracy:

But in the end, enacting this agenda won't just require an investment. It will require a new spirit of cooperation, innovation, and shared sacrifice. We'll have to remind ourselves that we rise and fall as one nation; that a country in which only a few prosper is antithetical to our ideals and our democracy; and that those of us who have benefited greatly from the blessings of this country have a solemn obligation to open the doors of opportunity, not just for our children, but to all of America's children. That's the kind of vision I have for this country, and that's the kind of vision I hope to make real as President of the United States.

Every candidate casts his or her policies as a fulfillment of American ideals. But to make the case that a sharp course correction left or right is a restoration of core values takes unusual political skill. So far, Obama seems to be making the case effectively, and building the "working majority" he frankly asks for.

Related posts:
Obama gets down to tax brass
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Obama's Metapolitics
Obama: Man, those Klinton Kids are Something
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him

11-0, back to the wall?

The Clinton campaign made a modest little attempt today to spin expectations:

To: Interested Parties

From: The Clinton Campaign

Date: Friday, February 29, 2008

RE: Obama Must-Wins

The media has anointed Barack Obama the presumptive nominee and he's playing the part.

With an eleven state winning streak coming out of February, Senator Obama is riding a surge of momentum that has enabled him to pour unprecedented resources into Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The Obama campaign and its allies are outspending us two to one in paid media and have sent more staff into the March 4 states. In fact, when all is totaled, Senator Obama and his allies have outspent Senator Clinton by a margin of $18.4 million to $9.2 million on advertising in the four states that are voting next Tuesday.

Senator Obama has campaigned hard in these states. He has spent time meeting editorial boards, courting endorsers, holding rallies, and - of course - making speeches.

If he cannot win all of these states with all this effort, there's a problem.

Should Senator Obama fail to score decisive victories with all of the resources and effort he is bringing to bear, the message will be clear:

Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date, have their doubts about Senator Obama and are having second thoughts about him as a prospective standard-bearer.

There's been no lack of incredulity in the face of this the-more-you-win-the-bigger-you- have-to-win-to-stay-even logic (best comment on Ambinder, by Lampwick: "so what they're saying is that a 1-14 win/loss streak would trump a 14-1 win/loss streak"). But the weirdness here is more than mathematical. One sideswipe in particular struck me as even odder than the main premise:

Senator Obama has campaigned hard in these states. He has spent time meeting editorial boards, courting endorsers, holding rallies, and - of course - making speeches.

A candidate who makes speeches! How opportunistic! How shallow! Can't be trusted with the red phone...

Holding back on the surge

Andrew Sullivan protests too much that benefits of the surge are uncertain:

But surely two facts help explain its unexpected success: the Sunni insurgency decided that crazy Jihadists were temporarily a greater threat than the Shiites or the Americans, and were happy to be trained, armed and paid by the US to regain control of their territory; and Sadr decided it was in his interests to facilitate rather than impede the construction of a Shiite-dominated state. The question now is whether the reduced violence means a greater chance of an historic rapprochement between the various ethnic and sectarian factions that divide Iraq at a national level - which was explicitly the goal of the surge (emphasis added0.

Cause and effect is always a tangle. Did Rudy Giuliani 'cause' the crime drop in NY? No, but he did the right things to facilitate it, for a while at least. I think it's fair to say that the surge created conditions pushing the Sunni insurgency and Sadr to "decide" on courses favorable to the goals of the surge. As to Sullivan's final question above: who knows whether or how much rapprochement there'll be -- but surely reduced violence means a greater chance of a good outcome.

We'll never know what would have happened had U.S. troop presence been reduced in early '07 in concert with the multi-front diplomatic efforts recommended by the Iraq Study Group. But I am troubled by Obama's so far unwavering insistence that he will withdraw all combat troops within sixteen months. If I remember right, Hillary was saying at an earlier phase that she couldn't know in advance what rate of troop withdrawal would be appropriate by Jan. 09 and beyond. I think that's the right tack. The time may come to gamble on taking our hand away -- for a different president, that time might be now -- but I don't think that judgment can be made far in advance or from the outside. I think that Obama somehow (and Hillary for that matter) need to open up some maneuvering space for themselves. Of course, they're in a box now -- each would beat up on the other if one hedged at this point, and either would have a very tough time running center on this after winning the nomination. Obama in particular has been running on a clean contrast with McCain -- how can he admit any lasting benefit at all may come from the surge?

A Mighty Wind? Rachman Blasts Obama's Rhetoric

Golly gosh, Gideon! The Financial Times' Gideon Rachman, one of the most acute and fact-based columnists writing in English today, has charged that Obama the Orator is an emperor wearing no clothes:

his most famous phrases are vacuous. The "audacity of hope"? It would be genuinely audacious to run for the White House on a platform of despair. Promising hope is simply good sense. "The fierce urgency of now"? It is hard to see what Mr Obama means when he says this - other than that some inner voice has told him to run for president. [snip]

...his campaign is relying on some of the most clichéd and least challenging slogans in the American political lexicon: unity not division; the future not the past; change not stagnation; an end to "business as usual"; lobbyists are bad, the people are good. Or as the man himself puts it: "We are choosing hope over fear. We're choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.

Respect for Rachman sent me back to Obama's speeches. I've concluded that I'm not deluded, and that Rachman has missed the gist of Obama's grist.

Leave aside that for better or worse, Obama's been packing his speeches with policy prescriptions since floating off on the ozone a bit on Super Tuesday (see Janesville WI and Virginia). More broadly, Rachman cuts Obama's exhortations out of context and ignores his intricate diagnosis of the "now" that demands such 'fierce urgency.'

That diagnosis operates on the level of both policy and politics, or dare I say metapolitics. It wraps a straightforward liberal agenda in a bid for a new consensus and a reformed political process. Obama's not left of center, but he's making a subtle but quite open pitch to move the center left.

At the heart of Obama's pitch is Democrats' 'what's the matter with Kansas?' wonderment, a conviction that Americans have been voting against their core interests - economically, as income inequality widens and risk shifts to individuals; internationally, as we groan under the burden of Bush's jump-with-both-feet imperialism; and constitutionally, as we sign away our civil liberties (and abuse those of our captives) in the name of security.Obama has defined the damage on all these fronts forcefully and concretely.

Obama's response to this frustration (on the economic front at least) grows out his life project, the first half of which is recounted out in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. The drama at the heart of the book is Obama's rejection of identity politics and black militancy in favor of learning the slow, patient labor of organizing--helping disadvantaged people identify what they need most and helping them work the political system to get it.

That early work shaped Obama's political style, which is to avoid demonizing the opposition -- and co-opt enough of it to build a 'working majority.' The keynotes of his rhetoric - yes, we can; the audacity of hope; the fierce urgency of now; we are the change we've been seeking -- express his invitation to all of us to join this working majority.

In this regard, Obama's controversial acknowledgment of Reagan's legitimacy as a 'transformational' leader is crucial. Reagan, Obama said, "put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they 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." In effect, Obama is saying, the country was right to swing right in 1980 -- and it's ready to swing left now." But he doesn't call it 'left' -- he casts his economic agenda as necessary to restoring "balance" and "fairness." Edwards emphasized the present divide between two Americas; Obama, noting the same ills, keeps his focus on past, future and ideal:

But through hard times and good, great challenge and great change, the promise of Janesville has been the promise of America - that our prosperity can and must be the tide that lifts every boat; that we rise or fall as one nation; that our economy is strongest when our middle-class grows and opportunity is spread as widely as possible. And when it's not - when opportunity is uneven or unequal - it is our responsibility to restore balance, and fairness, and keep that promise alive for the next generation. That is the responsibility we face right now, and that is the responsibility I intend to meet as President of the United States.

Obama's policies, as he often points out, reflect what is right now a virtual consensus Democratic agenda. His metapolitics is a critique of process: "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." That means cutting lobbyist influence; acknowledging that the opposition occasionally has an idea in its head; calling out Rovian campaign tactics and avoiding them himself (an ideal he hasn't always lived up to). His cure is part legislative fix of the process (lobbying and campaign reform) and part personal example. Obama uses his electoral success to date to argue explicitly that he can build a working majority for Democrats. He's used the Clintons' nastier attacks to argue that Bill failed and Hillary will fail to build a working majority for Democrats because of their long-established "truthiness" problems.

There's nothing vapid about this package. The policy agenda is explicit, the process diagnosis is detailed, and the pitch to build a working majority is indeed built on the urgency of this moment -- a moment in which, as David Frum recently pointed out in Rachman's FT, a generation of young voters is emerging that's likely to be voting against Bush into the 2060s.

At the heart of Obama's case that he can build a working majority is the evidence of the moment:

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.

Many sense that unity being forged as he speaks. He strikes chords across the political spectrum (see the reaction to his speeches on foxnews.com) . And he's hiding nothing in a very detailed policy agenda.

Related posts:
Obama gets down to tax brass
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Obama's Metapolitics
Obama: Man, those Klinton Kids are Something
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him

Olive branches and broken arrows: Hillary at GWU

Hillary's foreign policy speech at George Washington University today sketches out a reasonable if rather anodyne balance of hard and soft power (central trope: use both the arrows and olive branch) and includes a sharp, fair attack on Obama. But there's a hole in the heart of the speech. It's here:

On my first day in office, I will announce, as I have repeatedly in this campaign, that the era of cowboy diplomacy is over. That includes the doctrine of pre-emptive war. I have been against that for many years. I believe it led us into a blind alley and I don’t think I need to remind the retired flag officers here today how difficult the choices made by the president have been for American military. We need a new national military strategy that employs military power wisely instead of squandering it (emphasis added).

Against pre-emptive war for many years? The sad part about this claim is that it's true -- in theory. When Hillary says in this speech, "yes, we must use force when necessary but as a last resort, not a first resort," she is echoing precisely the language of her Oct 2002 speech in support of the resolution to use force in Iraq. In that speech, her support of the resolution was amply hedged with admonitions to seek U.N. support , try inspections first, not go to war unilaterally or preemptively.

The problem is that when Bush ignored her admonitions, Hillary lacked the courage of her convictions. She ended up being for a rush to war after she was against it. As recounted in a prior post, she never called Bush out as he "led us into a blind alley." As the Daily News reported on the eve of war, March 20, 2003:

Sen. Hillary Clinton wishes President Bush had lined up more nations in his "coalition of the willing" against Iraq - but she won't second-guess him as war approaches.

Clinton, outspoken on major issues such as homeland security, defended her near-silence yesterday over Bush's failed diplomatic efforts to rally UN backing to disarm Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein by force. "I think everybody wishes we had more international support for this action," Clinton said in an interview.

But, she added, "I don't think it's useful now to go back and Monday morning quarterback."

Maybe that failure to rush the passer four years ago explains the rhetorical blockage in the passive-voice swipe at "the choices made by the president" (and unchecked by me....). It's all very well to speak of being ready to make decisions "when that 3 a.m. phone call comes," but where's the evidence that Hillary has ever made a key decision under pressure? There's no bridge from having "had a pretty good inside view, over eight years in the white House and now over seven years in the Senate, of what the president goes through" or even from having "travel[led] to more than eighty countries representing the United States"...to having taken any difficult stands or made any difficult decisions.

Hillary's critique of Obama's too soft/too hard foreign policy pronouncements does have some bite:

If I am entrusted with the presidency, America will have the courage, once again, to meet with our adversaries. But I will not be penciling in the leaders of Iran or North Korea or Venezuela or Cuba on the presidential calendar without preconditions, until we have assessed through lower level diplomacy, the motivations and intentions of these dictators. Raul Castro, for example, has a stark choice. He can continue to stifle human rights and economic freedom in Cuba, or he can chart a new course toward democratic reform. We need to engage with our allies in Latin America and Europe to encourage Cuba on to the right path. But we simply cannot legitimize rogue regimes or weaken American prestige by impulsively agreeing to presidential level talks that have no preconditions. It may sound good but it doesn’t meet the real world test of foreign policy. I have traveled to so many countries working on issues involving some of the most intractable challenges we face. And as we see people respond to their own conditions, we have to be ready to act.

The clearest example of that is what just happened in Pakistan. The Pakistani people essentially repudiated the Bush administration’s policies and created a new dynamic that could lead to greater freedoms and democracy or to a greater crisis with implications for the war in Afghanistan.

One thing the American people can be sure of, I will not broadcast threats of unilateral military action against a country like Pakistan just to demonstrate that I am tough enough for the job. We have to change our tone and change our course.

I've been distressed to watch Obama continue to dig deeper into the hole he slipped into in the YouTube debate, when he said he'd meet five rogue leaders in the first year of his presidency. I suspect he didn't fully absorb the question and didn't mean to say that he'd meet all five personally within a year--just that, on principle, it makes sense to be willing to meet when there's something to be negotiated. But in post-debate dueling he went the other route and tried to suggest that Hillary wouldn't be willing enough to negotiate with rogues. He's been at it ever since -- most recently in the Austin debate, when he said he would meet Raoul Castro without preconditions (albeit with 'preparation') , handing Hillary yet another opportunity to spell out the conditions under which a president should meet with an adversarial leader. And on the other end of the spectrum, I think Hillary's right that Obama was essentially saber-rattling in declaring his willingness to order unilateral U.S. military action inside Pakistan's borders.

If those arrows hit home at all, it's likelier that McCain will reap the benefit than that Hillary will.

Related posts:
Hillary Gets Motherly II
Obama gets down to tax brass
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Obama's Metapolitics

Hillary Gets Motherly II

Hillary’s close-out in the Austin debate could be her pre-New Hampshire tear-up moment squared. I believe it struck a deep chord, what perhaps is and should be Hillary’s dominant campaign chord: her bid to nurture the nation, to be mother of us all.

If Hillary were a man, her governing philosophy would be dubbed paternalistic. She wants government to take care of us. When Obama says “yes we can,” that “we” is fruit of his bottom-up political trajectory: he began public life as an organizer. Hillary’s “we” is a royal “we,” a Queen Mother “we.” In her stump speeches a while back, and in her Super Tuesday speech, she fused herself with the Statue of Liberty as provider of refuge for the downtrodden:

We must continue to be a nation that strives always to give each of our children a better future, a nation of optimists who believe our best days are yet to come, a nation of idealists, holding fast to our deepest values, that we are all created equal, that we all deserve to fulfill our God given potential, that we are destined for progress together.

It's the ideal inscribed on the base of the Statute of Liberty in this great city that has overlooked our harbor through wars and depression and the dark days of September 11, the words we all know that give voice to America's embrace -- "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" -- a constant reminder that here in America, we face our challenges and we embrace all of our people.

So today we say with one voice -- give us the child who wants to learn, give us the people in need of work, give us the veterans who need our care. We say give us this economy to rebuild and this war to end. Give us this nation to heal, this world to lead, this moment to seize.

The tear-up moment in New Hampshire tapped into this self image, albeit with a strong tincture, as Maureen Dowd was pleased to highlight, of self-regard or self pity: it’s hard, but I keep trucking because I want so badly to do so much for so many. The Austin peroration started in the same vein –

But people often ask me, how do you do it, you know, how do you keep going…

But it packed a much more concentrated maternal clinch—perhaps because the object of her care was less abstract. Here, the stand-in for all of us was not the huddled masses at Liberty’s base but the “Intrepid” wounded warriors home from Iraq:

….with all of the challenges that I've had, they are nothing compared to what I see happening in the lives of Americans every single day.

You know, a few months ago I was honored to be asked, along with Senator McCain, as the only two elected officials to speak at the opening of the Intrepid Center at Brooke Medical Center in San Antonio, a center designed to take care of and provide rehabilitation for our brave young men and women who have been injured in war. And I remember sitting up there and watching them come in: those who could walk were walking; those who had lost limbs were trying with great courage to get themselves in without the help of others; some were in wheelchairs and some were on gurneys. And the speaker representing these wounded warriors had had most of his face disfigured by the results of fire from a roadside bomb.

You know, the hits I've taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country. And I resolved at a very young age that I'd been blessed, and that I was called by my faith and by my upbringing to do what I could to give others the same opportunities and blessings that I took for granted. That's what gets me up in the morning. That's what motivates me in this campaign.

Rereading this gave me chills --even as I weighed how calculated it might be. (Seeing it live didn't.) I don’t pretend I can read the tangle of motivations powering Hillary – or for that matter, the motives of anyone else with the odd mixture of megalomania and humility that makes it possible to mount a credible run for the Presidency. But here --Obama supporter that I am -- I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She does want to bind up the nation’s wounds, and she thinks there’s something in her little black surgeon’s bag for everyone. (The link with the 71 year-old McCain casts an odd Mom-and-Pop-gazing-down sidelight on Obama.)

The final sentences in Hillary's Austin peroration cast the nation as an extended friends and family circle:

And you know, whatever happens, we're going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that's what this election should be about. Thanks.

My wife points out to me that Hillary here adapts an Edwards line (and the alchemy casts an interesting light on the plagiarism debate). Edwards said in several debates about himself and his opponents: we’re fine, we’ll be fine. There was a two-Americas bite to this: “we,” the wealthy and privileged candidates, will be fine because we have money and government-supplied healthcare. Hillary softens this: she and Obama will be fine because of their personal networks. Then there’s a segue: surely she’s not suggesting that the American people have weak friends-and-family ties, or that this election is about strengthening them. She’s sliding from the personal safety net to the governmental. And that segue is her governing philosophy. It takes a village. Thanks.

"The Obama Delusion" Delusion

On Feb. 20, Robert Samuelson launched an assault on The Obama Delusion, claiming not that Obama's campaign is light on policy but that his policy agenda is "completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems." There is, Samuelson says, a "hugh and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views."

This attack misapprehends the relationship between Obama's politics -- his policy prescriptions -- and his metapolitics -- his bid to change the political process. Samuelson complains that what Obama freely admits is mainly a consensus Democratic agenda is nothing but a tired "goody bag." Obama, however, is not claiming unique originality in crafting the Democratic agenda -- but rather, the political skills to get that agenda passed and to change the political process so that the agenda is not destroyed in the passing.

Samuelson may think it would be old, tired, partisan politics to pass universal healthcare, but most Americans would regard doing so as an epochal, game-changing accomplishment. Hence a key tenet of Obama's appeal -- that this is a moment in which the right Democrat can seize on a leftward swing in the electorate and build a working majority to achieve core Democratic goals: universal healthcare coverage; reversing the 30-year tide of rising income inequality; a set of income supports and tax incentives for the working poor and middle class; and public investment in infrastructure and alternative energy.

For Samuelson, this agenda is a pander package. In fact, Obama's economic plan coherently reflects his core priorities -- to restore "balance" and "fairness" to the U.S. economy by redistributing income toward the working poor, redistributing risk that has been shifted onto individuals back toward the collective, and investing in the public good through infrastructure and energy projects. The money would come from troop withdrawal in Iraq, and by rolling back Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.

Because he does not respect this policy agenda, Samuelson misrepresents Obama's metapolitics -- his argument that we need to fix the policymaking process before we can craft effective policy. As Obama put it on Feb. 19 in Houston, "the problem that we face in America today is not the lack of good ideas. It's that Washington has become a place where good ideas go to die." He has said repeatedly that his policy prescriptions are broadly similar to Hillary's. But he has argued repeatedly and in depth that he is better equipped than Hillary to build a mandate to get the essentials passed -- and to transform the policymaking process as he goes.

According to Samuelson, this appeal is based too much on a kind of myth of personality:

The subtext of Obama's campaign is that his own life narrative -- to become the first African American president, a huge milestone in the nation's journey from slavery -- can serve as a metaphor for other political stalemates. Great impasses can be broken with sufficient goodwill, intelligence and energy.

True enough so far. The intoxicating prospect of electing a black president is an important 'subtext' of an apparently broad and deep wish in the electorate to 'change our politics.' It's also true that to a large degree Obama is his argument. His refusal to accept lobbying money, his pledge to remain truthful, his rhetorical success in touching chords throughout the electorate (see foxnews.com reaction to his speech), his electoral success to date, his record of moving bipartisan legislation -- all are deployed to demonstrate the possibility of transcending paralyzing partisanship without mincing on a progressive agenda.

Obama's apparent ability to win broad support while being completely explicit about a policy agenda that Samuelson regards as tired-left lends credibility to his pitch that he can change our politics by building a "working majority." The originality lies not in the individual policy prescriptions, but in the attempt to recast that package as the center in American politics. In that way, Obama is indeed bidding to be the left's Reagan -- "transformative" in taking the electorate where he wants to go.

Related posts:
Obama gets down to tax brass
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Obama's Metapolitics
Obama: Man, those Klinton Kids are Something
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him

America for Dummies

To Susan Jacoby, the latest curmudgeon to lament The Dumbing of America, I offer this this rejoinder in an eternal dialogue:

"Decay, decay, decay,
Decline, decline, decline..."

"Yada yada yada,
we're fine, we're fine, we're fine."

Heretical thought of the day

Why is it so hard for Democrats to stand up against Bush on FISA legislation? Many senators have made the point that the FISA law as it existed prior to the passing of the Protect America Act last summer needs only minor fixes, most notably to allow warrantless tapping of calls outside the U.S. that pass through the U.S. In response to the pressure to pass new legislation before the expiration of the PAA, it's been easy to point out that the expanded wiretapping authority granted by the PAA does not expire until next summer.

So why the rush to roll over? Why did the Senate pass a bill that grants full telecom immunity and provides no meaningful oversight? Democrats don't seem to lack for effective messaging to insulate them against 'soft on terror' smears:

"Their true concern here is not national security," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. "Rather they want to protect the financial interests of telecommunications companies and avoid judicial scrutiny of their warrantless wiretapping program." (Courtesy of Daily Kos's redoubtable McJoan).

Nor is it difficult at this moment to stare down the President's fear-mongering about the consequences of allowing the PAA to expire. Here is Senator Ted Kennedy on Bush's latest ultimatum:

Think about what we’ve been hearing from the White House in this debate. The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity. No immunity, no new FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he is willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.

That's a pretty effective rejoinder. So why didn't more Democratic senators take this tack? It's not just a matter of not wanting to stick it to the telcos for acceding to Bush Administration demands for data, since the Senate rejected a proposal from Sens. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) that would have made the government stand in as defendant in those suits.

Can the senators still be so afraid of Bush's 'soft on terror' smears? Or so beholden to telecom lobbying dollars? It would seem that rather than running for political cover, those opposed to expanding the executive branch power of surveillance would be able to make political hay out of the Bush Administration's lawlessness: PAA opponents have laid out hors d'oeuvre trays full of potent sound bites.

That's why I can't quite shake the suspicion that there may be more to the Dem senators' repeated rollovers than meets the eye. What do they fear might come out in litigation against the telecom companies? Or what surveillance powers demanded by the Administration do they fear not to grant, and why?

Janesville: Obama Gets Down to Tax Brass

Janesville, Wisconsin, February 13, 2008: Obama gets down to tax brass. That is, to redistributing a bit of income and reversing the rising tide of inequality. So how's he going to build a "working mandate" for an unabashedly liberal agenda - mainly a set of income subsidies, risk relief and job creation measures?

The sweep of social spending proposed in this speech is pretty breathtaking. There's a series of measures to shore up the income and security of the working poor and lower middle class -- minimum wage with a yearly COLA raise, expanded earned income tax credit, mortgage interest tax credit, a tax cut for working families, payroll tax elimination for seniors with less than $50k income, $4,000 tuition tax credit, expanded child care tax credit, expanded Family Medical Leave Act.

Then there's risk transfers: required direct deposit retirement accounts, debt relief for those who went bankrupt because of medical expenses -- and, uber alles, subsidies to make health care affordable. Finally there's public investment to spur employment: $60 billion for infrastructure, $150 billion for "green energy" investment. Whew.

The conservative soft spot for Obama notwithstanding, their guns are sure to be trained swiftly on the economic package laid out in its entirety here. George Will, for example, is going to have to rethink his recent outburst of Obamania:

The way to achieve Edwards's and Huckabee's populist goal of reducing the role of "special interests," meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money. But populists want to sharply increase that role by expanding the regulatory state's reach and enlarging its agenda of determining the distribution of wealth. Populists, who are slow learners, cannot comprehend this iron law: Concentrate power in Washington, and you increase the power of interests whose representatives are concentrated there.

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee — an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

Will is half-right. In the Janesville speech, Obama advances an Edwardian agenda, complete with a hat-tip to Edwards' precept that "this country should be rewarding work, not wealth." And he denounces tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy and the influence of lobbyists on the tax code and legislation generally. But it's also true that he presents this agenda as "an adult aiming to reform the real world" -- and avoids the demonization trap. His calls to national unity that many find so stirring and that some find vacuous are wrapped round his call to reverse the tide of income inequality that's been rising for thirty-plus years.

In fact, he casts income redistribution -- "at a time when we have greater income disparity in the country than we've seen since the first year of the Great Depression" -- as an imperative of fulfilling the American Dream. That's his key to winning the center.

There are several steps to this move-the-center-left gambit. First, Obama frames income redistribution at this time as simple fairness and a collective responsibility:

when opportunity is uneven or unequal - it is our responsibility to restore balance, and fairness, and keep that promise alive for the next generation. That is the responsibility we face right now, and that is the responsibility I intend to meet as President of the United States.

"Balance" suggests the center: the nation has careered rightward. "Responsibility" is a Republican buzzword -- but Obama applies it to the community rather than the individual. And "fairness" - who's going to quarrel with that?

One of Obama's favorite formulations is "we're not blameless." The 'we' can be the nation, the Democratic party, and even in some instances himself -- he's used this formula to confess to his own campaign's excesses in sniping at Hillary. At Janesville, it frames his economic agenda:

We are not standing on the brink of recession due to forces beyond our control. The fallout from the housing crisis that's cost jobs and wiped out savings was not an inevitable part of the business cycle. It was a failure of leadership and imagination in Washington - the culmination of decades of decisions that were made or put off without regard to the realities of a global economy and the growing inequality it's produced.

Second, Obama makes it a point to acknowledge countervailing realities. At Janesville, he denounces NAFTA and calls for "fair trade" agreements -- without specifying how such agreements can include "protections for American workers." But he also grants:

Now we know that we cannot put up walls around our economy. We know that we cannot reverse the tide of technology that's allowed businesses to send jobs wherever there's an internet connection. We know that government cannot solve all our problems, and we don't expect it to.

Third, contra the WSJ's Daniel Henninger, who accuses Obama of purveying "a message that is largely negative...a depressing message", Obama casts the current "imbalance" as a temporary aberration -- a condition we have more than enough strength to fix:

But that doesn't mean we have to accept an America of lost opportunity and diminished dreams. Not when we still have the most productive, highly-educated, best-skilled workers in the world. Not when we still stand on the cutting edge of innovation, and science, and discovery. Not when we have the resources and the will of a decent, generous people who are ready to share in the burdens and benefits of a global economy. I am certain that we can keep America's promise - for this generation and the next.

Finally, Obama makes shoring up the working poor and middle an imperative of the "unity" he always affirms, and which is often ridiculed as feel-good puffery. Here, unity is "shared sacrifice and shared prosperity":

In the end, this economic agenda won't just require new money. It will require a new spirit of cooperation and innovation on behalf of the American people. We will have to learn more, and study more, and work harder. We'll be called upon to take part in shared sacrifice and shared prosperity. And we'll have to remind ourselves that we rise and fall as one nation; that a country in which only a few prosper is antithetical to our ideals and our democracy; and that those of us who have benefited greatly from the blessings of this country have a solemn obligation to open the doors of opportunity, not just for our children, but to all of America's children.

None of this really new. Obama recognizes that. What's new, he tells us, is the context -- a time when income inequality has reached new heights, and tax cuts for the wealthy have reached new extremes, and lobbyists control legislation, and the national wealth is hemorrhaging into Iraq. On the level of values, he's calling for renewal and return rather than innovation. And like almost all U.S. politicians, he brings it back to the American Dream:

It's a promise that's been passed down through the ages; one that each generation of Americans is called to keep - that we can raise our children in a land of boundless opportunity, broad prosperity, and unyielding possibility. That is the promise we must keep in our time, and I look forward to working and fighting to make it real as President of the United States. Thank you.

Footnote: How can Obama pay for all this? Roll back some of the Bush tax cuts? Probably. Get troops out of Iraq quickly? Dicey. Forget about the $150 billion for green energy -- or, say, 90% of it? Probably. Question, Senator: what about military spending? Looked at any big-ticket weapons programs lately?

Related posts:
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Obama's Metapolitics
Obama: Man, those Klinton Kids are Something
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him

Why Daniel Henninger is Depressed

As one of the WSJ editorial page's chief ideological warriors, Daniel Henninger is easily depressed these days. Here's what he has to say about Obama's latest speech:

Listen closely to that Tuesday night Wisconsin speech. Unhinge yourself from the mesmerizing voice. What one hears is a message that is largely negative, illustrated with anecdotes of unremitting bleakness. Heavy with class warfare, it is a speech that could have been delivered by a Democrat in 1968, or even 1928. [snip]

Here's his America: "lies awake at night wondering how he's going to pay the bills . . . she works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill . . . the senior I met who lost his pension when the company he gave his life to went bankrupt . . . the teacher who works at Dunkin' Donuts after school just to make ends meet . . . I was not born into money or status . . . I've fought to bring jobs to the jobless in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant . . . to make sure people weren't denied their rights because of what they looked like or where they came from . . . Now we carry our message to farms and factories."

It ends: "We can cast off our doubts and fears and cynicism because our dream will not be deferred; our future will not be denied; and our time for change has come."

I am not saying all of this is false. But it is a depressing message to ride all the way to the White House.

Let's get this straight. To rally the country to deal with widening income inequality, a health system that leaves 45 million people uninsured and another 30 million underinsured, a massive transfer of risk of all kinds onto individuals,and the wage pressures imposed by globalization is to be 'depressing.' To tell the country 'yes we can" deal with these major social ills, to say that the American dream and the American ideal calls us to share opportunity, share risk, and yes, share wealth more equitably is to purvey "a vision of the United States that is quite grim and could wear thin in the general election."

In an odd way, this free market fundamentalist response to Obama makes me happy. It shows that economic conservatives have nothing left. Only an ideologically blinkered remnant still believes that that we have not failed miserably in recent years to deal with the festering social ills that both Obama and Clinton are calling us to deal with. The FoxNews.com readers commenting on the transcript of Obama's Martin Luther King Day speech did not find his message 'depressing' -- instead they poured out their admiration with comments like these:

"Beautiful! I’m a republican but I would vote for Senator Obama over Senator McCain!"

"Obama is the most inspiring candidate I’ve ever heard. He has caused me to switch from the Repulican to the Democratic Party and I will be volunteering in has campaign. Enough of the cynicism and doubt. Go Obama!"

"I’m a republican thats going to vote for Obama. Rather be for a party that is for the people and not just the wealthy corporate elite."

Obama has devoted his adult life to protecting the rights and increasing opportunity for the least advantaged. At the same time, as his much maligned comments about Reagan demonstrated, he has absorbed the lessons of liberal excess in the '60s and '70s --he's not calling for welfare as we used to know it or a protectionist regime. Here's that rounded awareness, from his speech at a GM plant in Janesville, WI on 2/13:

Now we know that we cannot put up walls around our economy. We know that we cannot reverse the tide of technology that’s allowed businesses to send jobs wherever there’s an internet connection. We know that government cannot solve all our problems, and we don’t expect it to.

He is pragmatic and inclusive enough to drive legislation that Republicans can buy into. It is because he is not bitter, because he calls on America to do better out of a deep confidence in the country's historical success in moving progressively closer to fulfilling the ideals expressed in the Declaration and the Constitution, that Americans of every political stripe are responding to him. Here is the flip side of the vision that Henninger finds so bitter, again from Janesville:

But that doesn’t mean we have to accept an America of lost opportunity and diminished dreams. Not when we still have the most productive, highly-educated, best-skilled workers in the world. Not when we still stand on the cutting edge of innovation, and science, and discovery. Not when we have the resources and the will of a decent, generous people who are ready to share in the burdens and benefits of a global economy. I am certain that we can keep America’s promise – for this generation and the next.

And, from the beginning of the same speech, the simple credo that engenders both the criticism and the promise:

But through hard times and good, great challenge and great change, the promise of Janesville has been the promise of America – that our prosperity can and must be the tide that lifts every boat; that we rise or fall as one nation; that our economy is strongest when our middle-class grows and opportunity is spread as widely as possible. And when it’s not – when opportunity is uneven or unequal – it is our responsibility to restore balance, and fairness, and keep that promise alive for the next generation. That is the responsibility we face right now, and that is the responsibility I intend to meet as President of the United States.

A few hours after reading Henninger, I happened on (via Ezra Klein) a magnificently clear-headed debunking of myths about Canadian healthcare on ourfuture.org written by a certain Sara Robinson who has lived under both systems -- at times simultaneously, as a Canadian citizen with an American employer. The most telling part of her analysis (in Part II) focused on the national security risks posed by a healthcare system in which legions of un- and underinsured put off going to the doctor when they are ill. Robinson contrasted the swift, thorough, efficient action of the Canadian healthcare system to contain the SARS outbreak with a likely scenario had the outbreak occured in the U.S.:

If the first people to get sick were among those 75 million without adequate insurance, they probably would have toughed it out a few extra days before finally dragging their half-dead carcasses into an ER somewhere. Not only would they be much farther along in the course of the disease -- and thus at greater risk of death themselves -- every one of them could have infected dozens or even hundreds of other people in the meantime, accelerating the spread of the epidemic.

Robinson argues that a country that aspires truly to be a commonwealth is more healthy in the broadest sense:

Part of what makes a country competitive is its own commitment to the common good. I've often been impressed by the very tangible sense of civic pride and shared effort my Canadian neighbors have in the fact that they're taking the best possible care of their own, regardless of status, age, or ethnicity. Every encounter with the medical system reminds them that they're all in this together. A medical system that routinely drives families into bankruptcy or divorce court is actively destroying, rather than adding to, the essential social capital that makes the whole society function.

To free market ideologues like Henniger, that 'social capital' is a chimera. But the American electorate is ready to invest.

Related Posts:
McCain and Lieberman's Bridge to Nowhere
Will-fully Misleading?
Niall Ferguson's Fog of War
Dissing the Electorate

Hillary Pulls a Punch

Andrew Sullivan today flags a Clinton "attack ad" running in Wisconsin, but it's pretty mild stuff - a slap for refusing to debate there, followed by plug for "the only health care plan that covers every American, and the only economics plan that freezes foreclosures." Even the requisite Dark Lord picture of the opposition is virtually neutral (speaking mouth, slightly asymmetrical, vs. Hillary's smile).

This attack manque serves as a reminder that Obama seems to have succeeded in scaring off heavy duty Clinton artillery, at least for the time being. Maybe it won't last, but it's been a while now - since shortly after Jan. 21, when he went on Good Morning America to call out Bill for "mak[ing] statements that are not supported by the facts." As the nastiness ratcheted up in the debate next day and a day or two following, Obama started hitting Hillary for "do anything/say anything" politics -- using the smears as Exhibit A in his argument that Hillary embodies "the politics of the past," i.e. Rovian warfare. Then came the South Carolina backlash, and some muted penitence, and then the lovefest debate on Jan. 31 in LA.

In the smear-free zone, Obama has sharpened his 'clean' case that Hillary is scarred by the battles of the '90s and can't get much past 47% of the electorate. He's fought to a better-than-draw on Super Tuesday, and swept the board with eight straight wins since then.

Even if the fur starts to fly again, forcing that pause has done him a world of good.

Was Primary Colors a Prophecy?

Thinking this morning about Primary Colors, Joe Klein's roman a clef inspired by the Clinton '92 primary fight -- specifically the scene where the Clinton figure, Jack Stanton, stymies a primary opponent in a call-in radio confrontation with an artfully selective cite of his past pronouncements on Medicare. Thoughts then drifted to how, after inspiring an on-air heart attack in that rival, Stanton-Clinton finds himself faced with an oncoming tsunami as a charismatic former governor emerges as a last-minute candidate and becomes the golden boy with the big mo'. Then comes the oppo research, and the discovery that the new rival was stoned through much of his tenure as governor and indulged in gay sex with a shady local honcho to boot. Stanton agonizes, Clinton-on-the-brink-of-ROTC style, about The Right Thing to Do (conscience goaded by the suicide of an old ally who dug up the dirt), and hits on bringing the material to the candidate himself, telling him, if we found this, so will the Republicans.... Double win - thanks for being a boy scout, and goodbye rival.

Thought was, maybe this was about '08, not '92. The Clintons are up against it now. Water's rising, and the Texas-Ohio levee's looking like a New Orleans defense. What are they going to pull?

p.s. Stray echo while flipping pages: Stanton caught out in an early debate, and smug defiict hawk opponent pronounces: "This man will say anything to get elected." Guess it's not the most original comeback in politics.

A Post-Atwater election?

Back in October, I wondered here whether the U.S. had become a post-democratic society. That is, a society in which marketing techniques have grown so successful that they overwhelm democratic discourse, so that even the most thoughtful, able and public interest-minded elected officials cannot develop good policy and legislation and cannot speak anything approaching the truth as they see it if they have any hope of being elected.

Sometimes now, with a little audacious hope, I wonder if we're coming out the opposite end -- that is, whether our democracy isn't developing some effective defenses to the consumer manipulations developed over the last forty years. Kos Diarist 2501 set me thinking this again with an interesting footnote to an Obama ad running in Ohio:

At the end, it does not just give Obama's web site and campaign phone number, but it also gives the correct date and times for voting in that state. I am sure that Obama's campaign knows that a prime vote suppression technique (especially often used against african-americans in poor neighborhoods) is to spread misinformation about the time and date of the election. While this is something that can help bring out more of Obama's (likely) voters in the primary, it is also a smart strategy to help get more Dem-likely voters out in the general election.

I'd like to think that we have seen this often enough--the push polling, the fake robocalling, the ugly last-minute smears-- that our candidates would know that developing pre-emptive strategies against such tactics would be a smart move. I'd like to see if we could start a discussion about this, collecting known past techniques, and also collecting ideas for smart ways to counter them. I think this Obama ad shows a very simple but smart way of combating one.

This call for "pre-emptive" strategies makes me think again that maybe this is the first 'post-Atwater,' or post-consumer or post-media election. In various ways, we may be developing antibodies against manipulative techniques that have worked for 2-4 decades: negative advertising, big-donor money, manipulation of mainstream media (there are so many voices, watchdogs and counter-watchdogs now), Penn-style microtargeting, to name a few. Not that these forces will go away or lose their power overnight, but there are new means of resistance -- and maybe a healthy scepticism and media saturation in the electorate.

Part of Obama's promise is to turn us past spin. On one level, that can't be any more true than that he'll end lobbying or partisanship. He's a skillful message masseuse himself. But note how he's stopped the Clinton smears in their tracks, at least for a brief spell. And how he's managed to dissect Hillary's limitations with a minimum of distortion. It's not past reason to hope that he could push through legislation to curb lobbying, and help discredit Rovian techniques, and dial down partisanship, which has historically ebbed and flowed.

Obama decries the 47% solution

While sharpening his case against Hillary Clinton as nominee in a rally in Virginia on Sunday, Obama fused his case for electability with a case for 'governability.' He's casting electability not as an end in itself, but as prelude to building a working majority to push through what's in large part a consensus agenda among Democrats.

Obama is treading a delicate line when on the attack. He has to steer away from the 'say anything, do anything' politics he decries while suggesting that Hillary is mired in those politics. Hence his inoculating praise of both McCain -- "a genuine American war hero" he said again on Sunday -- and of Hillary. Taking a cue from Joe Biden, Obama, as reported in today's New York Times, suggested that she was hampered by forces beyond her control:

“She’s a smart person, she’s a capable person, she would be a vast improvement over the incumbent,” he said in response to a question at a rally with 3,000 people, with 1,200 more listening in an overflow room. “What is also true is, I think it’s very hard for Senator Clinton to break out of the politics of the last 15 years.”

And again, distancing the person from the criticism:

“Senator Clinton starts off with 47 percent of the country against her,” he said in response to a question in Alexandria. “That’s a hard place to start.”

Then, with perhaps a degree of mano-a-mano payback, Obama effectively named that albatross he was hanging around Hillary's neck "Bill Clinton" -- getting more specific than ever about the limitations of Bill's legacy:

“Keep in mind, we had Bill Clinton as president when, in ’94, we lost the House, we lost the Senate, we lost governorships, we lost state houses,” he said. “And so, regardless of what policies they wanted to promote, they didn’t have a working majority to bring change about.”

Finally, completing the contrast, according to the Times (curiously this passage is in print but not online):

Mr. Obama said he would be able to create a working majority because he did not 'demonize' his opponents, and because he had been able to attract independents and Republicans.

So there's the case: the man who can win a broad majority can also defang the opposition.

Fact-and-fairness check: first, the Clintons were more demonized than demonizing. Second, the loss of a Democratic majority on Bill Clinton's watch was not mainly his fault. As Obama never tires of reminding us, "now" is the moment for Democrats to show "audacity," thanks to multiple Republican train wrecks.

As David Frum recently wrote with admirable clarity in the Financial Times, “The conservative ascendancy in American politics is coming to an end... 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[to Frum!], 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)."

As Obama has also said in other contexts, this change in zeitgeist isn't about him. His case is that he's the one best equipped to seize it, but it's fair to say too that Bill Clinton played great defense when the tide was running the other way. Does that mean that Hillary can't build a working majority? Not necessarily. Is Obama much better positioned to do so? Very probably.

Related posts:
Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Obama's Metapolitics
Obama: Man, those Klinton Kids are Something
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him

Obama brings it back to earth in Virginia

Obama seems to have responded to warning bells that he was floating off on elevated campaign rhetoric like the Wizard of Oz in his balloon.

At the Virginia Jefferson-Jackson dinner, he led with a straight electability argument, tied to a more down-to-earth version of his change-our-politics argument, and followed by a laundry list of policy promises. None of it was new, but the proportions were changed. By word count, the policy section was approximately 40% of the speech, compared with slightly more than 10% on Super Tuesday. This speech was a business case for a candidate claiming he can win a broad mandate and use it to push through legislation less distorted by lobbying interests than any other.

Obama began by taking on the mantle of nominee presumptive, moving John McCain up from Exhibit B to Exhibit A of Honorable Policymaker Corrupted by Washington Politics. After the obligatory "good man" gesture, he hit him first on policy and then on process, i.e. flip-flopping for political gain:

Now, John McCain is a good man, an American hero, and we honor his half century of service to this nation. But in this campaign, he has made the decision to embrace the failed policies George Bush’s Washington.

He speaks of a hundred year war in Iraq and sees another on the horizon with Iran. He once opposed George Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest few who don’t need them and didn’t ask for them. He said they were too expensive and unwise. And he was absolutely right. [McCain has actually spoken of a 100 year troop presence in Iraq, along the lines of our presence in Japan and Korea, with whom we're not exactly at war, but never mind...]

But somewhere along the line, the wheels came off the Straight Talk Express because he now he supports the very same tax cuts he voted against. This is what happens when you spend too long in Washington. Politicians don’t say what they mean and they don’t mean what they say. And that is why in this election, our party cannot stand for business-as-usual in Washington. The Democratic Party must stand for change.

This time Hillary was Exhibit B of Politician Corrupted by Process -- the better to demonstrate that she was like McCain, or maybe a bit worse with regard to politics if not policy:

It’s a choice between debating John McCain about lobbying reform with a nominee who’s taken more money from lobbyists than he has, or doing it with a campaign that hasn’t taken a dime of their money because we’ve been funded by you – the American people.

That allowed a segue to the electability argument - brought home to the local audience:

And it’s a choice between taking on John McCain with Republicans and Independents already united against us, or running against him with a campaign that’s united Americans of all parties around a common purpose.

There is a reason why the last six polls in a row have shown that I’m the strongest candidate against John McCain. It’s because we’ve done better with Independents in almost every single contest we’ve had. It’s because we’ve won in more Red States and swing states that the next Democratic nominee needs to win in November.

Virginia Democrats know how important this is. That’s how Mark Warner won in this state. That’s how Tim Kaine won in this state. That’s how Jim Webb won in this state. And if I am your nominee, this is one Democrat who plans to campaign in Virginia and win in Virginia this fall.

While arguing electability would normally come across as politics-as-usual, Obama's casting his as hardheaded idealism. His appeal to independents and Republicans is not born of triangulation; his policy pronouncements are liberal straight down the line. That's the best argument for his straight-talk pitch: he's succeeding beyond his liberal base in spite of his policies, not because of them.

Next came the policy prescriptions, nicely salted with arguments as to why he'd be able to get them effected -- including past accomplishments (expanding health coverage and passing middle class tax cuts in Illinois), others' endorsements (Kennedy's statement of faith in his health care commitment), quick-draw contrast with Hillary (why mandates don't help), and promises to get things done in a timely matter (health plan passed in first term, yearly minimum wage hikes).

He ended with a deft two-step that syncs up two halves of his argument: that Democrats have the right policy prescriptions, but that Democrats have been almost as corrupted by political process (over some undetermined period of time) as Republicans have. His solution, he admits implicitly (and refreshingly), is as much a product of the historical moment as of his own abilities: because the electorate has swung left, Democrats can come out of their defensive crouch and advance an unabashedly liberal agenda. Dropping the defensiveness is itself a cure for "broken politics," first because it means being less beholden to polling, and second because reducing the power of lobbyists is a natural Democratic platform plank, since Democrats by creed defend the poor and middle class against the monied interests that wield the vast bulk of lobbying power.

Spelling all that out would make for dull speaking. Obama does it by emphasizing that 'this is our moment" and by reminding us that "hope" has been realized by Democratic leaders in other such moments:

This is our moment. This is our time for change. Our party – the Democratic Party – has always been at its best when we’ve led not by polls, but by principle; not by calculation, but by conviction; when we’ve called all Americans to a common purpose – a higher purpose.

We are the party of Jefferson, who wrote the words that we are still trying to heed – that all of us are created equal – that all of us deserve the chance to pursue our happiness.

We’re the party of Jackson, who took back the White House for the people of this country.

We’re the party of a man who overcame his own disability to tell us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself; who faced down fascism and liberated a continent from tyranny.

And we’re the party of a young President who asked what we could do for our country, and the challenged us to do it.

That is who we are. That is the Party that we need to be, and can be, if we cast off our doubts, and leave behind our fears, and choose the America that we know is possible. Because there is a moment in the life of every generation, if it is to make its mark on history, when its spirit has to come through, when it must choose the future over the past, when it must make its own change from the bottom up.

This is our moment. This is our message – the same message we had when we were up, and when we were down. The same message that we will carry all the way to the convention. And in seven months time we can realize this promise; we can claim this legacy; we can choose new leadership for America. Because there is nothing we cannot do if the American people decide it is time.

This time, Obama managed to make hope seem pragmatic.

Related posts:
Feb 10: Obama decries the 47% solution
Feb. 5: Hillary's Speech was Better than Obama's
Obama's Metapolitics
Obama: Man, those Klinton Kids are Something
Obama Praises Clinton, and Buries Him

Back from the Shadows: Can Gates Steer the Surge?

Fred Kaplan's Times Magazine profile of Robert Gates includes a fascinating moment in which Gates, that veteran of Cold War consensus coursing, takes satisfaction from working his middle course magic on the Democratic presidential candidates:

At last summer's debate on Iraq, Cheney urged the president to resist the Democrats' call for troop withdrawals and to prolong the surge indefinitely. But the Join Chiefs argued that they didn't have the troops to sustain the surge beyond the summer of 2008. Gates made a more political point: that if there were no prospects for gradual but substantial troop withdrawals, popular support for the war would evaporate, and the next president would probably pull out all the troops as quickly as possible, resulting in Iraq's potential collapse. On the plane from Fort Hood, Gates spelled out his position. "We need bipartisan support for a prolonged presence in Iraq," he said. "But to do that, we need to demonstrate that we're drawing down to lower levels." He recalled watching one of the early Democratic presidential debates. The moderator asked the candidates if they would promise to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, the end of the first term. The three candidates with the highest poll ratings all declined to make that pledge. Gates remembered saying to himself, 'My work here is done."

That satisfaction is sure to drive proponents of a quick withdrawal bats. But those appalled by McCain's talk of a 100-year presence and by Bush's attempt to lock in the infrastructure of a long-term occupation should look closely at Gates' more qualified and nuanced support for the surge, and the long experience that brought him to it. Points to consider:

1) If Gates seeks to steer a Democratic Congress and likely future Democratic President away from a quick troop withdrawal, he also seeks to channel Democratic pressure to help force political action on the Iraqis. Very early in his tenure, when Bush partisans were crying treason at Democrats pushing for a quick withdrawal, Gates said that Congressional debate on war financing put useful pressure on the Iraqi government.

2) Gates is a master at deploying countervailing pressures in this manner. In Afghanistan, he is working on both the Europeans and the Pakistanis to win more effective support for war against al Qaeda and the Taliban. Frustrated by the unwillingness of NATO countries including Germany to place troops at risk, Gates has been uncharacteristically confrontational, charging that some countries are not willing to fight and die, and he is now is appealing directly to the European public not to lump the war in Afghanistan together with the war in Iraq as an American misadventure, but rather to recognize that conditions in Afghanistan directly affect their security. "'I think they combine the two,'" he said, according the AP(2/8). "'Many of them I think have a problem with our involvement in Iraq and project that to Afghanistan and don't understand the very different — for them — very different kind of threat' posed by al-Qaida in Afghanistan, as opposed to the militant group in Iraq that goes by the same name and is thought to be led by foreign terrorists linked to al-Qaida." There is a remarkable implicit admission here that Europeans are justified in considering Iraq an American debacle but that they should differentiate and recognize Afghanistan as a core NATO mission. When Gates is confrontational, the pressure is highly calculated and tempered by recognition of opposing perspectives.

On the other side of the Afghan border, January 25, the FT reported Gates saying that the U.S. would consider joint military operations with the Pakistanis inside Pakistan if asked - notwithstanding that we haven't been asked. “We remain ready, willing and able to assist the Pakistanis and to partner with them to provide additional training, to conduct joint operations, should they desire to do so.”

Gates does not want to lose in Iraq -- to see it revert to full-scale civil war. But his primary focus is al Qaeda. So he understands the imperative to reduce our presence in Iraq as quickly as possible. The future viability of the military also requires a drawdown. Kaplan reports that Gates told a Texas Chamber of Commerce meeting, "The people who encourage young people to go into the military are less positive than they used to be...Until we reach the point where joining the Army doesn't mean an automatic assignment to Iraq, we'll have a challenge."

3) Gates has also played point-counterpoint with regard Iran. According to Kaplan, Gates was a major force in getting the NIE on Iran released. But having used that bludgeon to avert the catastrophe of a preemptive strike on Iran, he is now tacking back quite sensibly and "has since publicly stressed the less assuring aspects of the estimate -- that Iran is still enriching uranium and may resume the weapons program at any time" (see Gates Validates, 12/5/07 ).

4) Triangulation, Gates style, is rooted in his experience in five prior administrations, particularly his role as Deputy National Security Advisor under Brent Scowcroft in George W. Bush's Administration. Gates is not particularly modest in portraying Scowcroft and himself as masters of orchestrating debate between national security principals, honest brokers effectively controlling presidential access, and forgers of administration consensus. While Gates emphasizes trust and open debate, Scowcroft, in Kaplan's article, characterizes his own role and Gates' as one of, shall we say, steerage: "Before his meetings, Bob would come in and ask, 'How do we want this meeting to end up?' He and I would figure out what we wanted. And sure enough, it would end up exactly that way. And everybody loved him. They all came out of the meeting thinking that they'd come up with the solution." (One of the happy campers in the N.S.C. Deputies Committee that Gates chaired was a certain Paul Wolfowitz. And one of the "strong individuals who ran State, Defense, CIA, and the other key institutions of national security" who, according to Gates, "trusted Scowcroft as no other National Security Adviser has been trusted -- to represent them and their views to the President fairly, to report to him on meetings accurately, to facilitate rather than block their access to the President" was Dick Cheney.)

5) More broadly, Gates' approach to policymaking is rooted in his view of the breakup of the Soviet Union as a bipartisan success spanning several decades. In his book, he portrays each of the five presidents he worked under as tacking a course between hawks and doves among their senior advisors, to varying degrees maintaining military pressure while seizing any negotiating opportunities available. He gives Carter ample credit for beginning the Soviet unraveling process - by his emphasis on human rights, and by his late beginning of a military buildup and support for Afghan resistance. He also recognizes the role of Congress: "The obstructionism and complicating role of Congress...did have a useful function. I sat in the Situation Room in secret meetings for nearly twenty years under five Presidents, and all I can say is that some awfully crazy schemes might well have been approved had everyone present not known and expect hard questions, debate, and criticism from the Hill. And when, on a few occasions, Congress was kept in the dark, and such schemes did proceed, it was nearly always to the lasting regret of the Presidents involved. Working with the Congress was never easy for Presidents, but then, under the Constitution, it wasn't supposed to be."

6) Gates bolsters his credibility by taking stances that don't boost his institutional interests. Time reports this week that he is "putting a damper on pressure from his own Air Force for Congress to buy more F-22 fighters ." The F-22 is a high-tech fighter "principally for use in 'near-peer' combat,'" i.e., for eventual combat with China, which has replaced the Soviet Union as a prospective major league foe. Gates wants to buy half the number his generals recommend. Late last year, in a speech at Kansas State University, he astonished Pentagon observers by telling students that the U.S. needed to boost the State Department's budget -- that is, redress the balance between hard power and soft power.

For all Gates' skillful piloting, Kaplan rightly notes that there may be no middle course in Iraq:

[Gates] added that it's 'important to send the Iraqis a message: that we're going to be coming home, and it's time for them to step up to the plate.' But on his trip to Baghdad, he was confronted with the gnawing question: If the Iraqis don't, or can't, 'step up to the plate,' should we come home anyway? And if the troops don't start coming home at a faster clip, if they stay embroiled in sectarian conflicts that the Iraqis do nothing to settle, what happens to the bipartisan support that Gates has sought as his highest priority? Gates is very skillful at controlling a bureaucracy, but a war is something else. As Gates himself said on the plan from Fort Hood, once a conflict starts, the statesmen -- people like him -- lose control.

In other words, to Powell's pottery barn rule -- if you break it you own it -- add the Humpty Dumpty rule -- if you break it, you may not be able to fix it. One irony that may thwart Gates is that his book, published in 1995, describes in detail a foreign policy practice that worked across five administrations -- contentiously and creakily, but effectively -- and that, in his telling, worked most effectively under George H. W. Bush. It also frames perfectly, by negation (years before the fact), how that practice broke down under W., as the Cheney lauded as a team player by Gates hijacked the decision-making process. Gates may have done much to repair that process. But as Kaplan suggests, he may not be able to control the outcome of decisions made while the process was broken.