dithering

[another excellent Tom Tomorrow cartoon]

Last month, the Vice President from those missing years, Dick Cheney, interjected himself into President Obama’s deliberations over Afghanistan, accusing him of “dithering.” Emerging from his undisclosed lair, the Dark One sneered:

"The White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger."

(He went on to attack President Obama for scrutiny of the Dark One’s torture practices.)

The usual practice in presidential transitions is that the outgoing administration gets out of town immediately after the inauguration and allows the new administration to enact its own policies without gratuitous hectoring from the previous regime. Cheney, who was uncommunicative to an extraordinary degree while in office (going so far as to appeal to the Supreme Court to avoid having to reveal the names of the industry task force he put together to determine energy policy), all of a sudden can’t keep his mouth shut now that someone else has to deal with the catastrophe his team left behind.

Let’s review: The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, trillion dollar deficits, and two wars going badly.

The proper response would have been to slither back under a rock somewhere. But if Cheney were to insist upon saying something the proper response would have been along the lines of: “I’m sorry. Really. I’m very, very sorry for the state of the country. If there is anything – ANYTHING – I can do to help, please let me know. Not that there is any reason you SHOULD seek my assistance. But if you do, I will just be here under this rock.”

As an example of how it should be done: Vice president Gore – part of the team that produced unprecedented economic growth including the creation of over 22 million jobs in eight years, that left behind record budget surpluses, reduced federal civilian employment by over 400,000, led a NATO force that deposed a brutal dictator in Serbia without the loss of a single American life, and … (well, you get the idea) – gracefully left DC and stayed quiet for a respectable period of time despite having garnered over 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election. And, it is worth pointing out, neither Gore nor Clinton nor any other member of their administration made any attempt to turn the Bush administration’s massive intelligence failure resulting in the 9/11 attacks into a partisan issue. (You might recall from distant history that in May of 2001, Bush named a terrorism task force headed by none other than Dick Cheney. According to the 9-11 Commission, the Cheney Task Force, “was just getting underway when the 9/11 attack occurred.” Which is another way of saying that they never met. They were “dithering,” as some might say.)

[Rather than following the example of Cheney between Bush administrations, retiring to a CEO gig at a company at the center of the military/industrial complex – like, say, Haliburton – Gore headed to Silicon Valley and joined the Google team long before their IPO and joined the Apple board when its share price was $7.47 – it closed today a few cents under $200. That is the kind of mojo that produced record budget surpluses.]

The war in Afghanistan (at least the latest iteration of the war that has been going on for over 30 years), which began over eight years ago (98 months), is now the third longest war in US history after Vietnam (116 months) and the Revolutionary War (100 months). And in both of those other wars the insurgents won – not a good omen. World War II, by contrast, only took 45 months. But, wait. I thought we WON the war in Afghanistan back in … 2002? I know because in September of 2002, George W. Bush assured us that, “The Taliban’s ability to brutalize the Afghan people and to harbor and support terrorists has been virtually eliminated.” He took it even further in September of 2004, boasting that the “Taliban no longer is in existence”. No longer in existence. Pretty definitive. No wonder, then, that when Gen. David D. McKiernan, then the top U.S. commander in Kabul, asked for another 30,000 troops, the Bush administration denied them. They chose to … dither. For eight years. While pursuing a trillion dollar war of choice in Iraq.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a report today that said what we already knew: Osama bin Laden was "within the grasp" of US forces in Afghanistan in late 2001 but escaped because the military’s call for reinforcements was denied by the Bush administration:

"The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism, leaving the American people more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today's protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan."

Not that Cheney needs anything of real substance to launch a partisan attack on President Obama. He even took it upon himself to attack President Obama for showing too much deference to the Emperor of Japan, calling the president’s bow to the 75-year old man, “a sign of weakness” and “fundamentally harmful” to the US. Does that mean Japan now goes on Cheney’s list of further wars after Iran? Because everyone knows that the proper response of a US president to a Japanese leader is to throw up on him.

(Joe Klein had a good comment in TIME: “Was his deep bow indicative of anything other than his physical fitness? (My midsection, sadly, prevents the appearance of obsequiousness in such circumstances.)”)

Contrast President Obama’s diplomatic gesture with the sobriety and dignity Cheney showed when seated among heads of state and other dignitaries, including French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, at the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.


So now President Obama is left to deal with the tragic mess in Afghanistan – on top of the worst economy in 70 years and that other war that Cheney was so eager to start. There are no good options in Afghanistan. For better or worse (worse, I fear), President Obama has already more than doubled the number of US troops in that country. He is to be commended for taking his time to challenge the options he was being given and to determine a strategy going forward before further escalating the US commitment in that country. I don’t like what I have been reading about what he will be announcing tomorrow evening. I would prefer we get out as soon as practical (more on that in due course). I REALLY don’t like the idea of further escalation in that graveyard of empires. But I will hear out President Obama with an open mind tomorrow evening knowing that he has been struggling with the difficult hand he has been dealt and that he has given genuine thought to the challenges we face there.

Rather than just cringe before the macho swagger of Republican critics like Dick Cheney who don’t have the basic decency to support their successors who are left to struggle with the unprecedented combination of catastrophes they left behind.

deficits vs. unemployment

Let’s take a little test here to see if you have what it takes to be a political pundit. Look at the following two charts, each of which puts a recent economic metric into historical perspective, and tell me which one appears to indicate an alarming crisis.

The first chart is the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond:



[Note: The 30-year Treasury bond was discontinued for 4½ years – from 10/01 to 2/06 – due to the record budget surpluses bequeathed by the Clinton administration and the Bush administration’s subsequent desire to avoid dealing with the long-term consequences of its return to record budget deficits. Here is the corresponding chart for the yield on the 10-year Treasury.]

As you can see from this chart, the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond dropped steadily from the early/mid-‘80’s until the early part of this decade and has held pretty steady since (with the exception of a big dip during last year’s financial crisis as money sought a safe haven in Treasuries). As I write this, the yield is 4.24% (3.28% for the 10-year Treasury), close to the lowest it has been in 50 years with the exception of that dip last year. (By contrast, it was 8.9% when Ronald Reagan left office.) Basically, the US government is enjoying just about the easiest time it has had financing its debt in generations.

Now for the second chart: The rate of job loss during the current Great Recession compared with the rate of loss in all previous post-WWII recessions:


The unemployment rate, at 10.2%, is the highest it has been since the Great Depression. By the broader measure that includes the underemployed and those who have dropped out of the labor force, it is 17.5%. And we continue to shed jobs. (Check out this fascinating time-lapse map showing the increase in unemployment by county by month since the Great Recession began two years ago.)

There you have it, aspiring pundits. Can you guess which is the alarming crisis: a/ the ability of the US government to finance its debt, or, b/ unemployment?

If you guessed, “a/ the ability of the US government to finance its debt,” congratulations! You, too, could be a political pundit for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or any number of other publications or networks.

You would expect an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from the chief economist for John McCain’s presidential campaign, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, to hype the deficit threat. But earlier this week, the New York Times published a front-page piece by Ed Andrews (probably that paper’s worst business writer), on the subject (“Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government”). It quotes legendary Pimco bond fund manager, Bill Gross, but fails to note that Gross has increased his fund’s holdings of US government-related debt from 48% last September to 63% now – the highest portion he has held in US government debt in five years and not exactly the position the world’s greatest bond fund manager would be taking if he expected interest rates on that debt to explode (which would cause the value of his holdings to plummet).

Currently, the US government’s net interest expense as a percentage of GDP is the lowest it has been in 30 years. But Andrews notes that it is projected to increase dramatically over the next ten years – to roughly the level it was when Bill Clinton took office in 1992. That’s certainly undesirable. But as front-page crises go, it doesn’t compare to the immediate problem of unemployment.

And it doesn’t remotely suggest anything like the looming prospect of a US government default on its obligations or a return to hyper-inflation as some of the more alarmist commentary suggests could happen. Take, for instance, a recent op-ed by Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post (“Could America Go Broke? ”), which included bits like this:

“Deprived of international or domestic credit, defaulting countries in the past have suffered deep economic downturns, hyperinflation, or both. The odds may be against a wealthy society tempting that fate, but even the remote possibility underlines the precariousness and the novelty of the present situation. The arguments over whether we need more ’stimulus’ (and debt) obscure the larger reality that past debt increasingly constricts governments’ economic maneuvering room.”

Samuelson cites Japan as an example of government debt out of control, which actually disproves his alarmist rhetoric – Japan’s government debt has increased to over 200% of its GDP (about three times the US level) while the interest rate on its 10 year bonds has actually decreased from over 7% in 1990 to 2.1% now.

Let’s compare the prospect of continuing high unemployment with the risk of a big increase in inflation. Paul Krugman points to the Philadelphia Fed survey of professional economic forecasters. Inflation is forecast to remain comfortably below the Fed’s 2% target while unemployment persists at stubbornly high rates – over 8% well into 2012. The current spread between 10-year Treasuries and the 10-year TIPS (Treasury inflation-protected securities) indicate that the market is forecasting 10-year inflation averaging 1.5%.

That's why it is troubling to read reports like this:

The Obama administration, mindful of public anxiety over the government's mushrooming debt, is shifting emphasis from big-spending policies to deficit reduction. Domestic agencies have been told to brace for a spending freeze or cuts of up to 5 percent as part of a midterm election-year push to rein in record budget shortfalls.

With unemployment still rising and nascent economic growth anemic, premature focus on near-term deficit reduction risks a repetition of FDR’s spending cuts and tax increases in 1937 that plunged the economy back into a steep decline before the country had fully recovered from the Great Depression.

While unemployment should be the priority in the short term, deficit reduction should be a long-term priority. Toward that end, it is worth revisiting how we got into our current mess and what that suggests for how we get out of it.

As I have pointed out before, the real explosion in the federal debt began under Ronald Reagan who cut taxes while increasing government spending to levels previously exceeded only during the four years of World War II. (After six years with spending over 22% of GDP and two years over 23%, Reagan left office with federal spending running at over 21%. By contrast, President Clinton left office with spending at 18.5% of GDP.) The result was that the national debt increased more than 400% from less than a trillion when Reagan took office to over $4 trillion when President Clinton and a Democratic Congress finally increased taxes again in 1993. The deficits during those years are even more dramatic when you state them in current dollars. In 2009 dollars (using the OMB year-end debt figures and the St. Louis Fed GDP deflator), Reagan and the first Bush ran up cumulative deficits of roughly $5 trillion. (This despite favorable demographics that resulted in entitlement spending to decline temporarily from 11.9% of GDP in 1983 to 10.1% in 1988. Last year, by contrast, the figure was 12.5%.)

The turning point in this deficit story was the 1993 Budget Act, about which I have written before, which was designed to eliminate the record budget deficits inherited by President Clinton. It included a large overall increase in taxes and extended the pay-as-you-go budget rules. It passed without a single Republican vote in Congress by the closest possible margin – by one vote in the House and with Vice President Gore breaking a 50-50 tie in the Senate. Republicans predicted that the economy would collapse as a result. Instead, it produced record budget surpluses and the strongest economy in a generation. But the Democrats paid a price, as they were crushed in the 1994 elections and lost control of Congress. Unfortunately, the lesson that was learned in Congress was that fiscal responsibility doesn’t pay politically.

George W. Bush inherited record budget surpluses but quickly turned that around. Together with a Republican Congress, he enacted over $2 trillion in tax cuts, increased the military budget even before counting the trillion dollar cost of two wars, and passed the largest increase in entitlement spending (Medicare Part D) since the creation of Medicare in the 1960’s with a ten-year cost of almost a trillion dollars. At least when LBJ created Medicare he also enacted taxes to pay for it. Bush and Congressional Republicans never even discussed any means of paying for their budget-busting initiatives. To pull that off, they had to let the pay-as-you-go budget rules lapse. That left them free to increase spending and cut taxes at will – which they did. The result, predictably, was an increase of over $5 trillion in the federal debt, almost doubling it in just eight years. Together with the quadrupling of debt under Reagan and Bush’s father, that accounted for almost 80% of all debt that had been accumulated in the history of the US government up to that point.

But the trajectory was even worse. Economists have a concept known as “fiscal space.” For example, if you are running a $500 billion surplus during an unsustainable bubble, when the crash comes the budget can take a $1 trillion hit (as a result of a decline in tax revenue and an increase in spending on "automatic stabilizers" like unemployment insurance) and still have a manageable deficit of $500 billion. You have some "fiscal space." But if you are already running a $500 billion deficit during boom times (as Bush did), then when the crash comes, you have a $1.5 trillion deficit. NOT a good thing. That is basically what happened during the fiscal year that ended last September.

As former Reagan official and Wall Street Journal op-ed writer Bruce Bartlett noted recently:

According to the Congressional Budget Office's January 2009 estimate for fiscal year 2009, outlays were projected to be $3,543 billion and revenues were projected to be $2,357 billion, leaving a deficit of $1,186 billion. Keep in mind that these estimates were made before Obama took office, based on existing law and policy, and did not take into account any actions that Obama might implement.

Therefore … a deficit of $1.2 trillion was baked in the cake the day Obama took office. …

Now let's fast forward to the end of fiscal year 2009, which ended on September 30. According to CBO, it ended with spending at $3,515 billion and revenues of $2,106 billion for a deficit of $1,409 billion.

To recap, the deficit came in $223 billion higher than projected, but spending was
$28 billion and revenues were $251 billion less than expected. Thus we can conclude that more than 100 percent of the increase in the deficit since January is accounted for by lower revenues. Not one penny is due to higher spending.

It should be further noted that revenues are lower to a large extent because of tax cuts included in the February stimulus. According to the Joint Committee on axation, these tax cuts reduced revenues in FY2009 by $98 billion over what would otherwise have been the case. This is important because the Republican position has
consistently been that tax cuts and only tax cuts are an appropriate response to
the economic crisis.

According to the Council of Economic Advisers, as of August the actual budgetary effect of the February stimulus was to reduce revenues by $62.6 billion and raise spending by $88.8 billion. Of the spending, the vast bulk went to transfers such as extended unemployment benefits and aid to state and local governments, which may have prevented cuts in spending that would otherwise have occurred but probably didn't do anything to increase spending. Only $16.5 billion in stimulus funds went to investment outlays for things such as public works. This is a trivial amount of money in a $14 trillion economy.

[I highly recommend these other two pieces that Bartlett wrote in Forbes on budget matters. Also, last June, David Leonhardt -- one of the New York Times' best writers on economic subjects -- had a good in-depth piece on how Clinton's record budget surpluses turned into our current trillion dollar deficits. Very little of it was the result of spending increases after President Obama took office.]

Last March, the Obama administration forecast a $1.8 trillion deficit for the fiscal year that began almost four months before they took office. The actual figure came in at $1.4 trillion, largely because the financial sector recovered faster than expected which reduced the taxpayer cost of last fall’s bailout.

As a result of the Bush tax cuts and the Great Recession, by fiscal 2009, federal revenue as a percentage of GDP had fallen to 14.9%. That is a staggering figure. That is the lowest it has been since 1951 – 58 years ago. By contrast, it was over 20% when President Clinton left office. The simple fact is that we will never get anywhere close to a balanced budget with today’s tax structure. We barely did it with the much higher tax structure President Clinton left behind (and with 2000 spending at 18.4% of GDP – it’s lowest level since 1961).

Which brings us to the subject of how to reduce the deficit.

Getting back to the earlier discussion, short term the deficit should be larger. We have, as Paul Krugman phrased it, “Fifty Little Hoovers” as tax revenue has fallen off a cliff and state (and local) governments are drastically slashing budgets and raising taxes. Raising taxes and cutting spending during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression is a REALLY bad idea. For no other reason, 70% of our economy is consumer spending and it isn't going to revive as long as incomes are plummeting and unemployment is increasing. But states have no choice -- their constitutions required balanced budgets. Only the federal government can make up that gap without making the problem worse.

As this graph shows, state governments face almost $500 billion in budget shortfalls over the next three years. Local governments are expected to add another $100 billion or so to that total. That is nearly $600 billion of "anti-stimulus" in the pipeline. So at least to this extent, federal stimulus just offsets the contractionary actions of the “Fifty Little Hoovers.”

But when it does come time to close the federal budget gap again, there are really only three big targets:

1/ Taxes,
2/ Health care spending; and
3/ Military spending.

Everything else is noise. TOTAL non-military discretionary spending -- everything from the entire judicial branch, the entire legislative branch, the Department of Homeland Security, immigration and naturalization, our nationals parks, education, public health, highways, air traffic control, the FBI, water projects, prisons, NASA, state aid, etc. -- is running at around $600 billion a year, less than half the federal deficit and less than military spending alone (which should top $700 billion this year -- even before any escalation in Afghanistan). Realistically, you can’t cut domestic discretionary spending enough to make a serious dent in the deficit.


Taxes: Let's start with taxes because that was the source of thegreatest erosion in the federal budget under both Reagan and Bush and it was the primary means by which the budget was subsequently brought into balance under President Clinton. Almost every Republican member of Congress (172 of 177 Republicans in the House and 33 of 40 Republican Senators) has signed Grover Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes by ANY amount at ANY time for ANY reason. So right there you can count out any Republican role in any serious deficit-reduction effort. But it gets worse. Not only will no Republican vote to raise taxes, they continue to urge further tax CUTS in the face of trillion dollar deficts and revenue at its lowest level since 1951. Earlier this year, for example, 35 Republican Senators voted for an alternative to the stimulus plan that would permanently cut taxes at a ten-year cost of $3 trillion. This was not a temporary stimulus measure, but a further permanent reduction in revenue that would add $3 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years. .

This leaves Democrats with the choice of doing nothing on taxes or doing what they did in 1993 -- raise taxes with no Republican support and get crushed in the next election. President Obama, as he does on most issues, has attempted to strike a middle ground, pledging no tax increases on those earning less than $250,000. Unfortunately, that may end up being the worst of both worlds -- an inadquate response to the long-term deficit while still giving Republicans the "tax increase" cudgel.

Health Care Spending: Long-term, health care spending is the biggest problem in the federal budget. Medicare, Medicaid and the State Childrens Health Insurance Program account for about 20% of the federal budget. That doesn't count other federal health care spending on veterans, Indians, military personnel and the health insurance of other federal employees and retirees. Nor does it count the revenue lost from the deductibility of employer-provided health insurance and health savings accounts. Add it all up and it dwarfs any other element of the budget. And the growth in health care costs greatly outstrips inflation. This isn't a government spending problem per se. It is a health care cost problem that affects our entire economy. It is bankrupting businesses and individuals and making our economy less competitive in world markets.

President Obama and Congressional Democrats, to their credit, have taken on this challenge as their top legislative priority after the stimulus. But, as with taxes, they have to do it with no Republican help. Even when the Senate Finance Committee stripped out a public health insurance option and an employer mandate -- the elements that Republicans most object to (and which would actually reduce the cost to taxpayers) -- they were able to secure only one lone Republican vote.

Ron Brownstein had a good piece at The Atlantic site this week where he details the cost-saving measures in the Senate health care bill. It is worth reading the whole thing. He notes:

[Jonathan] Gruber is a leading health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulted by politicians in both parties. He was one of almost two dozen top economists who sent President Obama a letter earlier this month insisting that reform won't succeed unless it "bends the curve" in the long-term growth of health care costs. And, on that front, Gruber likes what he sees in the Reid proposal. Actually he likes it a lot.

"I'm sort of a known skeptic on this stuff," Gruber told me. "My summary is it's really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I can't think of a thing to try that they didn't try. They really make the best effort anyone has ever made. Everything is in here....I can't think of anything I'd do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn't have done better than they are doing."

Gruber may be especially effusive. But the Senate blueprint ... also is winning praise from other leading health reformers like Mark McClellan, the former director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under George W. Bush and Len Nichols, health policy director at the centrist New America Foundation.

The Republican response to these efforts has been to manufacture lies about "death panels" that will "kill granny". Apparently they were so pleased with the traction they got scaring seniors that they have now made their opposition to efforts to control the long-term growth of Medicare spending the official party position. In August, Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele wrote a Washington Post op-ed where he proposed a "Seniors' Health Care Bill of Right":

The Republican Party's contract with seniors includes tenets that Americans, regardless of political party, should support. First, we need to protect Medicare and not cut it in the name of "health-insurance reform."

It was reported a couple of days ago that Republican leaders are circulating a list of ten policy positions that any Republican candidate would need to commit to in order to secure the support of the party (a so-called "purity pledge"). Among the required positions is "opposing health care rationing".

So now the Republican Party has become the defender of unconstrained growth in Medicare spending.

Military Spending: Even though we now spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined -- over $700 billion in the current year -- for Republicans, it is never enough. The ten-year cost of the Democratic health care bill, which among other things would extend health insurance coverage to 30 million Americans who currently lack it, is not much more than what we spend on the military in just one year. Defense Secretary Gates and President Obama have begun efforts to trim the most blatantly wasteful military spending -- but, for the most part, without Republican help. For example, earlier this year, when Congress voted on cutting off further funding for the $65 billion F-22 fighter program, a majority of Republicans voted against those cuts despite the fact that the Secretary of Defense (originally appointed by President Bush) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff want to terminate the program after 187 aircraft (the aircraft has never been used in either Iraq or Afghanistan). Republicans are also urging President Obama to send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan (on top of the 30,000 additional troops he has sent since taking office). That would add $40 billion a year to what we are already spending on that war. Republicans believe in "supporting the troops" -- as long as the cost can be added to our national debt. Forget any tax increase to pay for it.

Where does that leave us? After leaving behind trillion dollar deficits, the worst economy since the Great Depression, and two wars going badly, Republicans are now complaining about the deficit. But they don't want to raise taxes. Or cut the growth in Medicare spending. Or cut military spending. In other words, they don't really want to do anything about the deficit except use it as a partisan weapon.

As Dick Cheney famously said as the Bush administration was squandering our budget surpluses: “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”. IOKIRDI (“It’s OK if Reagan did it”).

Should the Democrats tackle deficit reduction even without Republican support? As the only party serious about governance, they don't have much choice. But to shift the focus to deficit reduction now, while unemployment is still rising, would be economically unwise and politically suicidal. As it is, Democrats have reinstated the pay-as-you-go budget rules that Republicans abandoned and are working to ensure that new initiatives, like health care reform, don't add to the deficit. And much of the deficit will turn around as the economy eventually recovers. But unemployment is likely to still be over 10% on election day next year. If Democrats don't do a lot more to try to bring that figure down, the economy will still be in horrible shape and voters won't care how much progress Democrats have made on long-term deficit reduction. Earning the praise of political pundits who see deficits as the bigger problem will be of little solace to Democratic members of Congress when they have joined the ranks of the unemployed.

hannibal lecter's zombie army invades new york

I started writing these blog posts (and their email predecessors) to keep my head from exploding during the Bush years. I thought I could get on with my life and largely ignore politics with President Obama and a Democratic Congress in control. Not that there wouldn't still be ego, idiocy and corruption and the inevitable frustrations and compromises of the legislative process. And President Obama was bound to disappoint the stratospheric expectations of him. But at least the crazy right could largely be ignored as essentially inconsequential.

But I underestimated the crazy right and its deafening noise machine. In retrospect, the fullness of its craziness had been constrained over recent years by the need to defend the actions of the Worst President in History. Paranoid conspiracies and fantasies of Nazi communists under your bed are harder to sustain when your team controls all the branches of government (including the secret prisons and torture chambers). Now liberated from any actual responsibility for governance, the crazy right has become crazier than ever. If the peace, prosperity, record budget surpluses and small-government deregulatory policies of the Clinton administration caused the right to become totally unhinged, we should have known that it would only escalate with an African-American president coming to office during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, inheriting trillion dollar deficits and two wars going badly.

Now that the Republic has survived the existential crisis of President Obama urging school children to work hard and stay in school, the grievous insult to America represented by President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, and the great debates over whether President Obama's gift to the Queen of England was insufficiently respectful or his greeting to the Emperor of Japan too respectful, we can return to the real passion of the paranoid right -- fear mongering.

Did you know President Obama is planning on bringing Hannibal Lecter to New York City to stand trial? He goes by the name Khalid Sheikh Mohammed these days, but his latest disguise can't fool us. No maximum security prison can hold him. The moment he steps foot in the United States, he will use the hypnotizing, x-ray telepathic superpowers he honed in the caves of Afghanistan to overpower his guards, flee to Iowa and gnaw on the bones of elderly white Faux News viewers. His legions of zombie soldiers will march in to New York from ... somewhere and ... do something. Hannibal Mohammed and his zombie army have restrained themselves over the past six and a half years while he was being tortured in secret prisons, just waiting for the ultimate provocation -- access to the American judicial system. That was the final straw -- now they are really mad.

Or something like that.

(I guess we should have seen this coming when President Obama ended the practice of torture. Legal due process and public trials were only a matter of time. That’s just the kind of thing a fascist socialist would do.)

Once again, New Yorker Jon Stewart has risen to the occasion. It is hard to improve on this segment. This clip really is a must-see.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Law & Order: KSM
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

(Stewart had another good take on the subject here at about 3:25 into the segment .)

I particularly like his exchange with Samantha Bee, including this bit:

Stewart: You fear then for the safety of New Yorkers?
Bee: Of New Yorkers? Listen, those guards aren't there to protect us from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
...
Bee: I don't trust the media. They lose their [deleted] during trials that don't matter. They are not ready for this.
...
Stewart: Maybe they learned a lesson. Maybe they won't get so obsessive.
Bee: Yes, I imagine they will keep themselves flexible because you never know when they'll have to drop everything to follow a balloon that may or may not have a boy in it.

Stewart also does a great job contrasting recent statements by fearmonger-in-chief, Rudy (“a noun, a verb and 9-11”) Giuliani with those he made in 2006 supporting the Bush administration’s successful prosecution of the “20th hijacker” (one of several “

20th hijackers” actually) Zacarias Moussaoui in federal court in Virginia. Indeed, this is ultimately the most concise refutation to the parade of fears now coming from the right: We are not operating in a void of experience here. This has been done before. Moussaoui was convicted in a civilian court in the US and now sits in the “supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado (along with 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph, Oklahoma City bomb conspirator Terry Nichols, FBI traitor Robert Hanssen, Jose Padilla, and a host of other charming folks). The world didn’t come to an end. But, of course, the right didn’t come unhinged then because Bush was president and the right-wing noise machine (e.g., Faux News, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Weekly Standard, National Review, Washington Times, etc.) and Republican politicians weren’t engaged in any of the fear mongering they are now.

New Yorker Josh Marshall had a good post on the subject . He respectfully notes the three main lines of attack on the decision to try KSM and others in New York:

Let's start with the idea that civilian trials have too many safeguards and create too big a risk these guys will go free. This does not hold up to any scrutiny for two reasons. First, remember all those high-profile terror prosecutions where the defendants went free? Right, me neither. It just does not happen. The fact is that federal judges are extremely deferential to the government in terror prosecutions. And national security law already gives the government the ability to do lots of things the government would never be allowed to do in a conventional civilian trial.

He then dissects each of those arguments:

Let's start with the idea that civilian trials have too many safeguards and create too big a risk these guys will go free. This does not hold up to any scrutiny for two reasons. First, remember all those high-profile terror prosecutions where the defendants went free? Right, me neither. It just does not happen. The fact is that federal judges are extremely deferential to the government in terror prosecutions. And national security law already gives the government the ability to do lots of things the government would never be allowed to do in a conventional civilian trial. ...

Finally, even in the extremely unlikely case that any of the five were acquitted of these charges, the government has a hundred other things it can charge them with. Indeed, the government could as easily turn them over to military commissions or indefinite detention post-acquittal as it can do those things with them now. That may not make civil libertarians happy. But it is the nail in the coffin of any suggestions that these guys are going to be walking out of the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan saying they're headed to Disneyland. It's simply not going to happen.

(Some might say so what if KSM is acquitted. Just set him free in Times Square with some advance publicity.)

Marshall goes on to the second argument:

Next we have the question of danger to the people of New York City. ... [J]ust on the facts I don't think al Qaeda terrorists are holding off on attacking New York now because they lack an incentive or feel we haven't pushed things far enough yet to merit another hit. The symbolic value of hitting New York might increase a bit. But it's already so high for these people that the increase seems notional at best. And more to the point, I choose to trust the people already charged with keeping the city safe.

On a more general level, however, since when is it something we advertise or say proudly that we're going to change our behavior because we fear terrorists will attack us if we don't? To be unPC about it, isn't there some residual national machismo that
keeps us from cowering even before trivially increased dangers? As much as I think the added dangers are basically nil, I'm surprised that people can stand up and say we should change what we do in response to some minuscule added danger and not be embarrassed.

Finally, there is the fear of what KSM and other defendant's might say:

I cannot imagine anything KSM or his confederates would say that would diminish America or damage us in any way. Are we really so worried that what we represent is so questionable or our identity so brittle? (Some will say, yes: torture. The fact that some of these men were tortured is a huge stain on the country. But it happened and it's known about. To the extent that it is a stain it is the kind of stain that is diminished not made worse by an open public accounting.) Does anyone think that Nuremberg trials or the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961 or the war crimes trials of Slobodan
Milosevic and others at the Hague advanced these mens' causes? Or that, in retrospect, it would have been wiser to hold these trials in secret?

At the end of the day, what are we afraid these men are going to say?

What we seem to be forgetting here is that trials are not simply for judging guilt and meting out punishment. We hold trials in public not only because we want a check on the government's behavior but because a key part of the exercise is a public
accounting and condemnation of wrongs. Especially in great trials for the worst
crimes they are public displays pitting one set of values against another. And I'm troubled by anyone who thinks that this is a confrontation in which we would come out the worse.

Two top officials in the Bush justice department, deputy attorney general Jim Comey and assistant attorney general Jack Goldsmith, have a good piece in today’s Washington Post defending the decision to try KSM and others in New York.

In fairness, the right has not been unanimous in its fear mongering on this subject. To my considerable surprise, anti-tax godfather Grover Norquist joined David Keene, founder of American Conservative Union, and former Republican representative and presidential candidate Bob Barr in a public statement saying that moving suspected terrorists to as US prison, "makes good sense," and that, "The scaremongering about these issues should stop." (Grover Norquist has now joined Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan as a voice for moderation within the Republican Party? Is it only a matter of time until someone outflanks Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck?) It's hard to improve upon their statement :

As it moves to close Guantanamo and develop policies for handling terrorism suspects going forward, the government should rely upon our established, traditional system of justice. This includes our system of federal prisons, which have repeatedly proven they can safely hold persons convicted of terrorism offenses.

We are confident that the government can preserve national security without resorting to sweeping and radical departures from an American constitutional tradition that has served us effectively for over two centuries.

Civilian federal courts are the proper forum for terrorism cases. Civilian prisons are the safe, cost effective and appropriate venue to hold persons convicted in federal courts. Over the last two decades, federal courts constituted under Article III of the U.S. Constitution have proven capable of trying a wide array of terrorism cases, without sacrificing either national security or fair trial standards.

Likewise the federal prison system has proven itself fully capable of safely holding literally hundreds of convicted terrorists with no threat or danger to the surrounding community.

The scaremongering about these issues should stop.

...

But most of all it makes sense for America because it is a critical link in the process of closing Guantanamo and getting this country back to using its tried and true, constitutionally sound institutions.

Somehow the Republic has managed to survive for 230 years with due process of law. In fact, until a few years ago, who knew that indefinite imprisonment without legal due process at the unchecked discretion of the president was really an option?

UPDATE:

Leave it to Tom Tomorrow to sum it up in a few cartoon panels:

[click to enlarge]

election 2009

So, what are the big lessons to draw from this week’s off-year election?

Despite all the inane media chatter, one lesson you SHOULDN’T draw is that this represented some kind of stinging rebuke to President Obama or his policies. Obviously, that is the lesson Republicans would like you to draw. And the media have to frame the election in some kind of mega-narrative – why else would anyone west of Buffalo care about the outcome of an election in New York’s Northern-most Congressional District? And with few actual data points – primarily two gubernatorial races and two Congressional races – opinion flows in to fill the factual void. Let me contribute to that vacuous opinion.

As Gail Collins wrote Thursday:

There seems to be a semiconsensus across the land that the myriad decisions voters made around the country this week all added up to a terrible blow to the White House. If that’s the way we’re going to go, I don’t think it’s fair to dump all the blame on gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia. …

We have a dramatic saga story line brewing here, and I do not want to mess it up by pointing out that Obama’s party won the only two elections that actually had anything to do with the president’s agenda. Those were the special Congressional races in California and upstate New York.

What lessons can we draw? I think we can safely conclude that during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, when states and local governments are being forced to slash budgets and raise taxes to fill the gap left by plummeting revenue, and with the narrow measure of unemployment running over 10% nationally and much higher in many local areas, it’s not a great time to be an incumbent politician, especially a chief executive. (It doesn’t help if you are the former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs or a Wall Street billionaire.)

Let’s look at the individual races, starting with the two governor’s races.

Here’s Collins again:

The defeat of Gov. Jon Corzine made it clear that the young and minority voters who turned out for Obama will not necessarily show up at the polls in order to re-elect an uncharismatic former Wall Street big shot who failed to deliver on his most important campaign promises while serving as the public face of a state party that specializes in getting indicted.

Corzine is one of the most unpopular governor’s in the country. As far back as April 2006, his approval rating was an abysmal 35% -- and that was long before the financial crisis and the Great Recession (and, I might add, ten months before Barack Obama even declared his candidacy for president). By June of this year it was still languishing at 36%. Under the circumstances, the fact that he lost his bid for reelection by less than five percentage points is actually rather remarkable. In fairness to the Republican Party, his opponent, Chris Christie, was also a weak candidate. A better candidate should have crushed Corzine.



As you can see from this chart, Corzine with 45% of the vote significantly outperformed his 37% approval rating. For that matter, Christie failed to get even 50% of the vote. (Independent Chris Daggett – no relation – got 6% of the vote.)

Christie made no attempt to “nationalize” the election (unlike Corzine who benefitted from campaign appearances by President Obama). Not once in any of Christie’s campaign ads did he ever mention Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or the Democrats' health care plan or the stimulus package. Not only did he not attack President Obama, he actually ran TV ads featuring positive references to the Obama campaign and invoking his message of “Change.” (And check out Christie’s obsequious “Message to President Obama” welcoming him to New Jersey.) Obviously, that is a smart tactic in a heavily-Democratic state. But it makes it hard for Republicans to subsequently claim that it was a referendum on President Obama (well, it doesn’t make it hard from them to do it – just hard to do it credibly).

Then there are the exit polls. Among those who actually voted in the New Jersey election this week, President Obama’s approval rating was 57% -- identical to his share of the New Jersey vote last year. This is impressive given that New Jersey voters this year were older and white than last year’s voters, suggesting President Obama’s approval rating is actually up in that state. According to a CNN exit poll, 60 percent of New Jersey voters said that President Obama played no role in their gubernatorial vote, 19 percent said that their vote was one in support of the President, and 20 percent saying that their vote was in opposition to President. The 17% of New Jersey voters who identified health care as their most important issue went for Corzine by a 4-to-1 margin (not exactly consistent with the notion that this was a vote protesting health care reform in DC).

The CNN exit poll showed the same thing in Virginia: A 55 percent majority of voters said that the President was not a factor in their vote, and an additional 18 percent indicated their vote in Virginia was one of support in the President. Just 24 percent of voters indicated that their vote was one of opposition to President Obama. In Virginia the change in the make-up of the electorate was particularly stark. As Ruy Teixeira wrote in the New York Times:

In Virginia, while the president’s 2009 approval rating was 5 points less than his 2008 voting result, the 2009 electorate was also far more conservative than last year’s. Besides being far older and whiter than in 2008, the voters in Virginia on Tuesday said they had supported John McCain last November by 8 points, meaning they were not favorably inclined toward President Obama to begin with. In fact, given that only 43 percent of these voters said they supported Mr. Obama last November, his 48 percent approval rating among them does not indicate a shift away from him but rather toward him.

It’s hard to see how a vote against the Democratic candidate in Virginia, Creigh Deeds, was a vote against Democrats in Washington – he did everything he could to distance himself from any position that might actually inspire the Democratic base to turn out. From ThinkProgress:

[On energy policy:] By the end of his campaign, Deeds was running ads attacking Obama’s clean energy agenda, saying Obama’s “cap and trade bill” would “hurt the people of Virginia.” Other ads carried the same message: “Creigh Deeds says no to any new energy taxes from Washington.” Instead of disputing his Republican opponent’s false attacks on climate legislation, Deeds amplified them. … During the primary season, Deeds defended the despicable practice of mountaintop removal, telling a reporter in March, “The coal industry calls it surface mining.” .

[On health care policy:] During the final gubernatorial debate, Deeds stressed that health reform must “reduce costs so more people can afford insurance” and “increase coverage,” but argued that creating the option of a public health care plan “isn’t required.” “I don’t think the public option is necessary in any plan…I would certainly consider opting out if that were available to Virginia,” he said. …

Deeds also tacked right on labor (opposing the top legislative priorities of organized labor) and immigration issues (among other things, voting to designate English as the state’s official language). The result, predictably, was an absolutely horrible Democratic turn out. Interestingly, despite the heavy GOP tilt to the 2009 electorate, the 24% of Virginia voters who cited health care as their main issue still went for the Democrat Deeds by a 51 to 49 margin. And the 42% of Virginia voters who described themselves as “moderate” also broke for Deeds, 53 to 47. But conservatives outnumbered liberals 40 to 18% -- reflecting a more motivated turnout on the right. That was the key to Republicans success.

Virginia, which holds its gubernatorial race in the off-year after presidential election, has a history going back 32 years to 1977 of always electing a governor of the party opposing the president elected (or re-elected) the previous year. For example, in November 2001, Virginians elected Democrat Mark Warner (now a US Senator) to be governor. At the time, George W. Bush enjoyed an 86% approval rating (due entirely to 9-11 two months earlier – just days prior to 9-11 his approval rating was 51%). No one was claiming at that time that Warner’s election represented a rebuke to Bush. And, yes, even the year after Ronaldus Magnus was elected president in 1980, Democrat Chuck Robb was elected governor of Virginia (and Democrat Gerald Baliles was elected in 1985, the year after Reagan’s re-election). Reagan’s presidency managed to survive. (In an interesting aside, Reagan’s approval rating in October 1981 was 56% -- identical to President Obama’s 56% last month.)

None of this is meant to suggest that it was actually a good thing for Democrats to lose those two governor races. They represent genuine gains for Republicans and Republicans are to be congratulated for running better campaigns than the Democrats in those states. Deeds, in particular, was a weak candidate who ran a miserable campaign. But it is a stretch to argue that either race was a mandate on President Obama. Indeed, both Republican candidates resisted efforts to “nationalize” their races and focused, instead, on local issues.

The only two Federal races on Tuesday were the special elections in New York’s 23rd Congressional District and California’s 10th Congressional District. Let’s start with the easy one.

Did you even hear about this race? Democrat John Garamendi won by 10 points in the district formerly represented by Ellen Tauscher, whom President Obama named to a State Department position. Although this is a pretty safe Democratic district, Tauscher was a “New Democrat” who tended to frustrate progressives by voting as if she represented a swing district. Garamendi, by contrast, is a whole-hearted progressive. To take one particularly timely example, he not only supports a robust public option, he supports a single-payer health care system.

NY-23, by contrast, has been represented only by Republicans pretty much ever since there has been a Republican Party – going back to 1872. As you no doubt heard, the Democrat, Bill Owens, won the race to fill the seat vacated by Republican John McHugh, whom President Obama named to be Secretary of the Army. His opponent, Don Hoffman, was a far-right, third-party candidate who had become the darling of the Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck crowd. As it appeared to become a two-man race between Hoffman and Owens, the official Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, dropped out and endorsed the Democrat. This is the one race that Republicans clearly framed as a referendum on DC Democrats, as Sarah Palin, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and a host of other national Republicans came into the district to campaign for Hoffman. This teabagger insurgency ended up putting a safe Republican district into the Democratic column on election night. (Had Scozzafava not received 6% of the vote as a result of early absentee ballots, Owens probably would have had a margin even bigger than his eventual 4% win.) Owens has already been sworn into office and will be on hand for the vote on the House’s health care bill today, or whenever it takes place. He has said he plans to vote for the bill.

Admittedly, the circumstances of the NY-23 race were so bizarre that it is hard to generalize the results to other races. (The Urban Dictionary now recognizes “scozzafavaed” as verb meaning “purged of moderation.”) More from Collins today:

Meanwhile, there’s nothing but confidence and serenity among the right-wing tea-party types. They cannot get over the triumph in upstate New York, where thanks to their really extraordinary efforts, a completely safe Republican seat went to the Democrats. Think how far their movement has come! Only a few months ago, they barely had the power to disrupt a town meeting. And soon they will be able to destroy anything in their path, including their own party, like conservative locusts.

The bottom line from Tuesday’s election is that Nancy Pelosi has two more votes for health care reform than she had a week ago. (Republicans have now lost five consecutive competitive special elections in Republican-friendly territory.)

The anti-incumbent mojo was at work in New York City, as Michael Bloomberg had to spend over $100 million of his own money – more than either Bush or Kerry spent on their general election campaigns in 2004 – to barely vanquish his Democratic opponent, securing only 50.6% of the vote. (Quick: Name Bloomberg’s Democratic opponent.) At least he didn’t buy any more votes than necessary. (That reminds me of the apocryphal story of the cable John F. Kennedy received from his rich father, Joseph P. Kennedy, during his first run for Congress: “Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.”) Bloomberg’s spending worked out to around $180 per vote. Too bad voters didn’t have the option of just taking the money and skipping all the campaign ads. (A bit of trivia: Did you know the population of New York City at 8.3 million is higher than that of Virginia at 7.7 million and only slightly less than that of New Jersey at 8.6 million? At least this wasn’t being touted as a big defeat for President Obama.)

One of the biggest disappointments on Tuesday night was the passage of Maine’s Referendum 1 which overturned the state’s gay marriage law. Conan O’Brien had an interesting observation:

"Voters in the state of Maine voted no to gay marriage, but yes to medical marijuana. That’s right---people in Maine believe marriage should be a sacred institution between a really stoned man and a really stoned woman."

In the glass-half-full department, the good news is that over 47% of Maine voters supported gay marriage. And Maine isn’t California … or even Vermont. It is a pretty conservative place (you might have heard that it has two Republican Senators). Who could have imagined this result five years ago, let alone ten years ago? Young voters overwhelming have no problem with the idea of two people of the same sex entering into a committed lifetime relationship. It’s only a matter of time. On the same night, Washington State voters defeated a referendum that would have repealed the state’s “everything-but-marriage” law. (Stephen Colbert had a good segment on Referendum 71, if you happened to miss it.) In so doing, Washington became the first state in the country to approve a gay-equality measure not by court fiat or legislative action, but by the direct will of the people. And Houston (of all places) may become the largest city in the country with an openly gay mayor (Annise Parker was the top vote-getter on Tuesday heading into a run-off next month).

Washington State and Maine also both decisively defeated ballot measures modeled on Colorado’s disastrous “Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR)” measure (which Colorado voters later largely repealed after their state fell to #49 nationally in per capita state spending on education among other things). If Tuesday was supposedly a big victory for anti-government teabagger types, the voters of Washington and Maine apparently didn’t get the memo.

What does all of this portend for 2010? Not much, I think. But I don’t think Democrats have any reason to be sanguine. A bad economy tends to overwhelm just about everything else and the US economy will almost certainly still be very bad a year from now. Unemployment is now over 10% and is unlikely to be much lower next November (I hope to come up with a post on unemployment in the next few days). Tax revenue is plummeting – at the federal level it has fallen below 15% of GDP, its lowest level since 1950 (!). At the state level, that means huge spending cuts and/or tax increases. In that environment, I wouldn’t want to be a governor running for reelection.

There are 37 governor’s seats up in 2010 with the current occupants almost evenly split between Democrats (19) and Republicans (18). After Tuesday’s election, the Cook Report designated another seven of those seats as being in peril for the incumbent party (four Republican and three Democratic). Overall, Cook considers eight Democratic seats and nine Republican seats at risk, but with Republicans having the edge in four of those and Democrats in none.

After two blow-out elections, Democrats almost certainly will lose seats in the House – the question is just how many. Democrats picked up 27 House seats (and no Senate seats) in Reagan’s first mid-term election in 1982; Republicans picked up 54 House seats and eight Senate seats in Clinton’s first mid-term in 1994. (Bush’s first mid-term in 2002 was a bit of an aberration because of his continuing post-9/11 bump – Republicans actually picked up seven House seats and two Senate seats in that election.)

In the Senate, 38 seats are up in 2010, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Cook currently has 6 Democratic seats and 5 Republican seats in the “toss-up” category. Until likely opponents are defined, it is too early to have either leaning toward a pick up by one party or the other. At this point, if I had to guess, I think it is likely the Democrats will lose anywhere from one to three Senate seats. The best case scenario at this point is probably Democrats holding their own – a net Democratic pick up is unlikely. But it is still too early to be making even educated guesses.

While the bad economy is a virtual certainty, favoring Republicans and challengers generally, the wild card is the fanaticism on the right. If I were a Republican I would be worried that the forces that were at work in NY-23 this year could result in successful primary challenges to Republican incumbents and a lot of candidates from the far right of the political spectrum ending up on the ballot. This dynamic could at least partially neutralize the advantages that Republicans should have as the out-of-power party in a mid-term election with a horrible economy.

And there are other reasons for optimism among Democrats.

The percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Republicans is at a record low. The pollster.com average of polls currently has that number at 22% (vs. 34.6% for Democrats). While that is significant, I wouldn’t read too much into it. A lot of folks who used to call themselves Republicans now prefer to identify as Independents – and many of them are actually to the right of the Republican Party, not somewhere in the center. Also, people tend to jump on the winning bandwagon – with Democrats in control of everything, there is a natural tendency for Republican self-identification to decline. Still – 22% is pretty miserable.

And for what it is worth, a CNN poll this week continues to show Democrats with a six-point edge (50-41) on the generic ballot among registered voters (i.e., asking voters which party they would rather see controlling Congress). An Ipsos/McClatchy poll gives Democrats a seven-point edge (48-41) on the generic ballot test.

Much will depend on what President Obama and Congressional Democrats are able to actually accomplish over the next year. Like an off-year election, a mid-term election is all about turnout. There is little likelihood that Democrats will be able to generate the kind of turnout among young voters and minority groups for a mid-term election that they did for the general election in 2008. But if Democrats are seen as delivering on their promises and making genuine progress, they could do OK.

I think the populist anger is real and it is big, particularly against the financial bailout – and that is not necessarily partisan or right or left. If Democrats don’t deliver on meaningful financial reform, I think there will be a big backlash, including among Democratic voters. Democrats will also suffer if they don’t deliver on meaningful health care reform. If Democratic members of Congress revert to form, get scared of their own shadows and pull back from any meaningful accomplishments, the story of the 2010 election could be all about turnout on the right (the Virginia governor race writ large).

And that is not a pretty picture.

the great myths of ronaldus magnus

Can you imagine how the right-wing noise machine would react if President Obama:

• Increased federal spending as a percentage of the economy to levels previously seen only during World War II.
• Tripled the national debt.
• Dramatically increased Social Security payroll taxes on employees and employers.
• Increased the capital gains tax to 28%.
• Raised gas taxes.
• Increased federal government employment.
• Created a massive new cabinet department.
  
• Sold arms to Iran.
• Withdrew entirely from a Middle Eastern war zone in response to a single deadly terrorist attack against US troops.
• Funded terrorist groups in our own hemisphere.
• Signed a treaty committing to make deep cuts in our strategic nuclear weapons.
• Proposed the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

I'm sure there would not be enough tea in India to express the wingnut outrage.

And what if the most expensive federal office building in history was subsequently named after him? I'm sure it would be mocked as a fitting legacy to this “big government” president.

The president I'm describing is, of course, Ronald Reagan.

Is it just me or have you noticed a surge in Ronald Reagan adulation lately? Of course, he achieved Republican sainthood a long time ago. But for the past eight years it was Bush who could do no wrong. Anyone who criticized Bush hated America and if the critic happened to be a Republican he or she was excommunicated. Even as he left office during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with the federal deficit running well over $1 trillion/year and two wars going badly, Bush still commanded an approval rating among Republicans of 75%. Think about that. Three out of four Republicans still thought Bush had done a good job. (And that was even after the financial and auto bailouts, now the subject of rage among many of those very same Bush supporters.) Makes you wonder what it would take for Republicans to think he had screwed up.

In fairness, Republicans now seem to have more or less thrown in the towel when it comes to defending Bush's legacy. So they have had to reach back over twenty years to Reagan for a time when their Dear Leader could do no wrong. (Bush's recent disappearance from Republican idolatry is kind of like one of those Chinese Communist Politburo photos that has been altered to remove the guy who is now in prison.)

Last week, the new Republican National Committee Web site was launched and it included in its “GOP Heroes” section a reference to Reagan as “Ronaldus Magnus” (that’s Latin for “Ronald the Great”). Now, I will confess to being among those who hold President Obama in high regard. But as far as I am aware the Democratic Party hasn’t taken to referring to him with a title befitting a Roman emperor.

One of Reagan’s biggest cheerleaders over the years has been his former speechwriter and now Wall Street Journal op-ed writer Peggy Noonan. She had a Journal piece last week saying that it was “absurd” that Reagan hadn’t gotten the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing about the fall of the Berlin wall.

Which is what prompted me to write this post.

The myth that Reagan brought about the end of the Cold War has become so entrenched that it is no longer even questioned. Next time someone makes that assertion, pose this one-word question: “How?”

You might get an answer something like this: Reagan gave a speech where he said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” and 29 months later the Berlin Wall came down. What more evidence of causation do you need? Post hoc ergo propter hoc (“After this, therefore because of this”). “A” happened, then “B” happened. Therefore, “A” caused “B”. For example, I can stand on the beach at high tide and successfully command the water to recede. And unlike Reagan and the Berlin Wall, I can repeat this trick. Twice a day.

A more sophisticated theory of how Reagan ended the Cold War goes like this: Reagan’s big military build up caused the Soviets to overspend in an attempt to keep up which bankrupted the Soviet economy. This explanation has the benefit of a plausible theory of causation. But let’s break it down. We spent a huge amount of money on the military during the ‘80’s (a true statement). The Soviets tried to keep up with our escalating military spending (an untrue statement). The Soviet economy collapsed (a true statement). Can you spot the problem? The Soviets didn’t attempt to match our military build up. We greatly increased our military spending during the ‘80’s (tripling the national debt in the process), but the Soviets didn’t.

The Soviet Union's defense spending did not rise or fall in response to American military expenditures. Revised estimates by the Central Intelligence Agency indicate that Soviet expenditures on defense remained more or less constant throughout the 1980s. Neither the military buildup under Jimmy Carter and Reagan nor SDI had any real impact on gross spending levels in the USSR. At most SDI shifted the marginal allocation of defense rubles as some funds were allotted for developing countermeasures to ballistic defense.

If American defense spending had bankrupted the Soviet economy, forcing an end to the Cold War, Soviet defense spending should have declined as East-West relations improved. CIA estimates show that it remained relatively constant as a proportion of the Soviet gross national product during the 1980s, including Gorbachev's first four years in office. Soviet defense spending was not reduced until 1989 and did not decline nearly as rapidly as the overall economy.

Go ahead – research it yourself. Google (or “Bing”) “soviet military spending” and read everything you can find on the subject. You can start here or here or here. Or just take my word for it. This is not a matter of serious factual dispute.

A lot of things contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Basically, their economic system sucked. You’d think right wingers would be satisfied with that explanation. You don’t really have to come up with a heroic story line with the US at the center – Soviet-style communism was perfectly capable of collapsing on its own. But if you do need US heroics, you can point to the policy of “containment” begun with Truman and George Keenan and supported by both parties for 40 years. (The wingnuts at the time wanted to pursue a policy of “regime change” against Stalin, but after two world wars our country wasn’t much in the mood for more war, especially against a country that had been our ally in defeating the Nazis.)

I would argue that a key event in that Cold War history was the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975 by President Ford, whereby the Soviet Union agreed to international principles of human rights, which gave rise to groups monitoring human rights within the Soviet Union and its satellites. As noted in Wikipedia:

However, the civil rights portion of the agreement provided the basis for the work of the Moscow Helsinki Group, an independent non-governmental organization created to monitor compliance to the Helsinki Accords (which evolved into several regional committees, eventually forming the International Helsinki Federation and Human Rights Watch). While these provisions applied to all signatories, the focus of attention was on their application to the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, including Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.

According to the Cold War scholar John Lewis Gaddis in his book "The Cold War: A New History" (2005), "[Leonid] Brezhnev had looked forward, [Anatoly] Dobrynin recalls, to the 'publicity he would gain... when the Soviet public learned of the final
settlement of the postwar boundaries for which they had sacrificed so much'...
'[Instead, the Helsinki Accords] gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal movement'... What this meant was that the people who lived under these systems — at least the more courageous — could claim official permission to say what they thought."

Another key event was the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland which began the unraveling of Soviet control of Eastern Europe. Polish independence was certainly encouraged by native son Karol Józef Wojtyła becoming Pope John Paul II in 1978. But it was the famous strike at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk, led by Lech Walesa, that gave birth to Solidarity, the first non-communist controlled trade union in the Warsaw Pact countries. That was in September of 1980 – when Jimmy Carter was president (if only Walesa had held off another four months this, too, could have been credited to Reagan).

Another factor was the spread of information technology that helped undermine centralized control. I traveled to the Soviet Union in 1990 just as it was collapsing. Their economy was bleak. I remember being told by people I met that they always knew they had it tough, but they had been led to believe that they had it much better than those of us in the West. It was the decentralization of information technology (the fax machine was the revolutionary technology at the time) that made Soviet citizens aware of just how bad they had it. That brought with it a huge sense of betrayal – that their leaders had been lying to them all those years and they had been enduring hardships to no good end.

The Soviet Union’s nine-year quagmire in Afghanistan certainly didn’t help things. As a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in 1979, President Carter ended Nixon’s policy of “détente” toward the Soviet Union and began funding the Mujahedeen fighting them in Afghanistan. He also imposed a trade embargo on the Soviet Union (and boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics). The Soviet Union eventually withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988 – leaving them drained militarily, economically and emotionally. (Afghanistan – where empires go to die.)

But perhaps the straw that broke the Soviet Union’s back was the collapse of oil prices in the ‘80’s. In 1980, as a result of the Iran-Iraq war drastically curtailing oil production in both of those countries, the price of oil reached a high of $39.50/barrel, a record high in inflation-adjusted terms until last year, equal to more than $100/barrel today. As energy conservation measures begun in the ‘70’s really kicked in (between 1973 and 1985, the energy/gdp ratio in the US declined by 28%), the price of oil fell again, and by 1988 it averaged below $15/barrel for the year. That was great for big oil importers like the US, but bad for an oil exporter like the Soviet Union. (Oil prices continued to stay low, reaching an all-time annual low of less than $12/barrel in 1998 – in inflation-adjusted terms lower than at any time since World War II. Indeed, the poor performance of the US economy in the mid/late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s can be attributed largely to high oil prices, while the strong economy during the late ‘80’s and throughout the ‘90’s can be attributed, to a significant degree, to the collapse in oil prices.)

Oh, and it is probably worth noting that the Berlin Wall actually came down in November of 1989, ten months into the administration of George H.W. Bush, not under Reagan. The final collapse of the Soviet Union followed two years later, in 1991.

But Reagan was the rooster crowing just before dawn. Next time someone claims he caused the sun to rise, just ask, “How?”

(In fairness, I will give Reagan credit for recognizing Gorbachev as a true partner for peace and, against the strident objections of his wingnut advisors, agreeing with Gorbachev to big reductions in the nuclear arsenals of both countries. Much to the consternation of those advisors, Reagan even agreed with Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland in October 1986 on the ultimate goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons. This is a goal that President Obama has revived. But those were actions that, if anything, would have helped the Soviet economy not undermined it.)

Another claim I have been hearing a lot lately is that Reagan cut government spending. Unlike the causes of the end of the Cold War, this one is easy to dispel and the proof is objective and indisputable.

Federal spending as a % of GDP was higher under Reagan than under any president in US history before or since (other than four years during WWII). Here are the numbers:

1980 21.7
1981 22.2
1982 23.1
1983 23.5
1984 22.2
1985 22.9
1986 22.4
1987 21.6
1988 21.3
1989 21.2

[Note: I would attribute fiscal years 1980 and 1981 to Carter – I include them here just for comparison to the years that follow. The federal government’s fiscal year begins October 1, so by the time a new president is sworn in we are almost four months into that fiscal year. Given that there are lags in economic performance, and it takes a new president time to enact new policies, I credit that year to the previous president. For example, in the first three months of the fiscal year that just ended, the federal debt increased by over $500 billion – putting us on course for an annual deficit of over two trillion dollars. That was before Obama took office. This is not a perfect methodology but it is probably better than giving the incoming president credit or blame for the first partial year of his administration. In any event, it doesn’t change any of my basic points.]

(Spending stayed at about the about the same level during the administration of the first Bush, coming in at 21.4% of GDP in 1993. By the end of Clinton’s eight years, however, it had been reduced to 18.5% of GDP in 2001.)

Along the way Reagan also increased federal civilian employment by 60,000 (it declined by more than 400,000 under Clinton). And he created a new cabinet agency (the Department of Veteran Affairs).

Of course, as we all know, Reagan also cut taxes. What do you think happens when you increase spending and cut taxes? From the time of Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 until Clinton and a Democratic Congress raised them in 1993, federal debt increased more than four fold – from under a trillion dollars in 1981 to over $4 trillion by the end of 1992. (Under George W. Bush, it almost doubled again, increasing by over $5 trillion, from $5.6 trillion in January, 2001 to $10.7 trillion in December, 2008. As a percentage of GDP it went from 54% to 75% under Bush. And that’s not even counting the trillion dollar structural budget deficits he left behind.)

For those who think that President Obama’s campaign proposal to raise the tax on capital gains from 15% to 20% is “socialism” and will destroy the economy, please take note that Ronaldus Magnus raised the capital gains tax from 20% to 28% in 1986. And the economy did just fine over the ensuing decade before it was cut to 20% again in 1997. (I should note the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was one of the best pieces of tax legislation in my lifetime. Reagan, to his credit, worked in a bipartisan manner with Senator Bill Bradley and Rep. Dick Gephardt to eliminate almost every loophole in the Internal Revenue Code. It even eliminated the tax preference for capital gains. The result was a much simpler tax code and lower overall rates. Unfortunately, while the structural changes were good, overall rates were left too low to pay the bills, perpetuating Reagan’s massive budget deficits.)

Reagan didn’t cut all taxes, however. He signed into law increases in Social Security taxes on employees and employers, taking the tax from 7% to 7.65%. And he increased gas taxes by a nickel a gallon, raising an additional $3.3 billion in the first year. But these are taxes that effect working people not the rich.

So much for the idea that Reagan cut spending or otherwise was a fiscal conservative. Just more Reagan myths.

This post is too long already so I won’t go into any depth on the whole Iran-Contra thing (you can read all the details here), other than to note that Reagan sold arms to Iran (which was against the law) and used the money to fund terrorists in Central America (which was also against the law). And it wasn’t like this was some kind of rogue operation run out of the CIA or the Pentagon. It was run out of the White House. But the cover up largely worked. Most of the relevant documents (including a presidential covert action finding signed by Reagan authorizing the sale of weapons to Iran) were destroyed. Most of the key players (including Reagan’s secretary of defense and national security advisor) were subsequently pardoned by George H.W. Bush. And some of those convicted of felonies in conjunction with the Iran-Contra affair (like Elliott Abrams and John Poindexter) even turned up later in the administration of George W. Bush. Just one observation: How do think it would have gone over with the wingnuts had it been a Democratic president who illegally sold arms to the Islamic Republic of Iran?

A final Reagan myth that we might as well refute is the idea that Reagan was a uniquely popular president. Compared to George W. Bush, sure. But, to quote Paul Krugman:

A number of news sources have already proclaimed Mr. Reagan the most popular president of modern times. In fact, though Mr. Reagan was very popular in 1984 and 1985, he spent the latter part of his presidency under the shadow of the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton had a slightly higher average Gallup approval rating, and a much higher rating during his last two years in office.

You can’t blame Republicans for wanting to mythologize Reagan. After all, what’s the alternative? Nixon? But that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to accept those myths unchallenged.

UPDATE: A good op-ed from the Boston Globe, “Who Ended the Cold War?”

thoughts on the peace prize

France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, probably summed up best the sentiment underlying the unanimous decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee:

"By awarding [President Obama] its most prestigious prize, the Committee … does justice to your vision of tolerance and dialogue between States, cultures and civilizations. Finally, it sets the seal on America's return to the heart of all the world's peoples."

America’s return to the heart of all the world’s peoples.

It's hard to see how that is a bad thing.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also praised the decision, saying, "In a short time [President Obama] has been able to set a new tone throughout the world ..."

A new tone. Hard to argue with that.

Despite the view on the American right that Europe is some kind of anti-American socialist monolith, Sarkozy and Merkel are both conservative, pro-American leaders. They even supported Bush. (For that matter, two of the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are members of the conservative party in that country. But, then, as a German friend of mine used to say, "The US has a conservative party ... and a far right party.")

[It's also worth noting that Germany and France have the largest contingents of NATO troops in Afghanistan after the US and the UK. Of course, they were mocked by many in this country for not joining Bush's folly in Iraq. "Freedom fries," and all that. As it turned out, it's too bad we didn't heed their advice and focus on stabilizing Afghanistan instead. Sometimes it’s a good idea to listen to your friends. But that is another subject.]

More than anything, the award the of the Nobel Peace Prize to a sitting US president is an affirmation that US leadership matters profoundly to the rest of the world. It is a fundamentally "pro-American" gesture. Which is why it was condemned by those who hate America like the Taliban, Hugo Chavez, and Hamas -- and the anti-Obama crowd in this country, like hate radio bloviator Rush Limbaugh who acknowledged his alliance of convenience with the enemies of freedom: "Now that's hilarious, that I'm on the same side of something that the Taliban, and that we all are on the same side as the Taliban." We are all on the same side as the Taliban? What do you mean "we," paleface? (Hey, Rush -- the Taliban share your views on a lot of things, like feminists and gays, to cite just two examples.)

By contrast, those who praised the decision included the likes of previous Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Shimon Peres and Mikhail Gorbachev. Which crowd would you rather associate yourself with?

But, then, President Obama was attacked by his domestic critics for telling school kids to work hard and stay in school. As Eugene Robinson wrote, "If Obama were to cure cancer, the blowhards would complain that he’s put thousands of hard-working, red-blooded American oncologists out of work."

As E.J. Dionne noted on NPR:

There is something kind of rancid about our current politics that you saw here, again, as you saw when there was a certain celebration on the right when Chicago didn't win the Olympics. ... [T]here was just such anger that our president won the Nobel Peace Prize, that's kind of disturbing about the state of politics.

(As Dionne also noted, "Obama’s critics can’t have it both ways. If it was bad for presidential prestige to lose the Olympics, isn’t it good for presidential prestige to win the Nobel Peace Prize? ... Why isn't that worth celebrating? ... Yet, if Oslo should deflate a lot of the bloviating about Copenhagen, I doubt that Obama’s critics will notice any contradiction. They will just move on smartly to the next attack.")

The Republican party didn't waste a moment to turn this honor for our country into a partisan attack. Within minutes of the announcement from Oslo, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele came out with this:

“The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ It is unfortunate that the President’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain - President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.”

I quote Steele only because it allows me to pass along this quip from Pat Buchanan: "Michael Steele had a Kanye West moment, coming out there and saying Beyonce should have gotten the award. He shouldn't have done that." What does it say about the state of politics in this country when Buchanan is a voice of moderation on the right?

President Obama's senior advisor David Axelrod made this initial observation upon hearing the news: "I’d like to believe that winning the Nobel Peace Prize is not a political liability." Sadly, given the "rancid" state of American politics, it probably is the case that the Nobel Committee did President Obama no favor by awarding him this prize. But I think President Obama will survive this setback as he has others.

It's a perfectly reasonable view to state that the award was premature. President Obama is fairly new on the scene and presumably (cross your fingers) has a long time remaining on the political stage. We can only hope that his best work is still ahead of him. But it is also reasonable to note that the Nobel Peace Prize is not given posthumously. Which means it is often given long before the recipient's life work is done and before history has rendered a verdict on the success of those efforts.

[It's worth noting that despite all the chatter about the 205 nominations for the Peace Prize having been made back in February, when President Obama had only been in office for a couple of weeks, the decision of the Nobel Committee was not made until last Monday.]

President Obama correctly noted, "[T]hroughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes."

In some cases, it has gone to honor specific achievements, like Jimmy Carter brokering the Camp David accords between Israel and its largest Arab neighbor, Egypt, which has resulted in a peace between those two former enemies that has endured for over 30 years. But in other cases it has been used to give momentum to a cause. Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, but the brutal military dictatorship she has resisted continues to rule Burma. What has she "accomplished"? Archbishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 -- ten years before the apartheid regime in South Africa fell. Was it "premature" then? Or in 1993 when it was awarded to Nelson Mandela for the same cause? Shirin Edabi received it in 2003 for promoting democracy and human rights in Iran -- how has that been going lately? And last time I checked the Dalai Lama hadn't succeeded in securing the freedom or cultural autonomy of the Tibetan people. But he gives inspiring speeches.

Which is the point. The path to peace lies in the hearts of people. (Our friend, Mickey Lemle, who made the excellent documentary Compassion in Exile: The Story of the 14th Dalai Lama, tells a story of His Holiness advising him not to go to an anti-war demonstration if he had anger in his heart. "Be the change you seek in the world," as Gandhi said.) Changing peoples' hearts is an accomplishment.

As far as I'm concerned, President Obama's speech in Cairo in June alone fully justifies the Nobel Peace Prize. (If you never saw it, it is still worth doing so. You can watch it here.) Given the increasingly violent "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West, a US president traveling to the largest Arab city to deliver an eloquent message of peace is a remarkable event. (If only that had been done in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 -- instead talk of a "crusade" and Manichean macho swagger like "either you are with us or you are with the enemy" and "God is not neutral.")

Those who say President Obama got the Peace Prize for being "not Bush" have half a point. The magnitude of the change President Obama represents is defined by the starting point. It is fair to say this is as much a prize given to American voters for choosing a change of course as it is to President Obama for leading that change of course. It is not a good thing when the world's sole superpower becomes a force of destabilization and in some ways even lawlessness. No one would be celebrating the end of torture and secret prisons if those things never existed in the first place.

Of course, those who want us to start yet another war, with Iran, when we are overextended in two wars already aren't going to like a message of peace. (Remember this one? “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.”) And the Chinese were pretty unhappy about the Dalia Lama getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

As Steve Benen wrote in the Washington Monthly:

For all the recognition of George W. Bush's unpopularity, it's easy to overlook the ways in which the international community was truly mortified by the U.S. leadership during the Bush era. The irreplaceable leading nation could no longer be trusted to do the right thing -- on use of force, torture, rule of law, international cooperation, democratic norms, even climate change. We'd reached a point at which much of the world was poised to simply give up on America's role as a global leader.

And, love him or hate him, President Obama changed this. I doubt anyone on the Nobel committee would admit it, but the Peace Prize is, to a certain extent, an implicit "thank you" to the United States for reclaiming its rightful place on the global stage.

It's indicative of a degree of relief. Much of the world has wanted America to take
the lead again, and they're rightly encouraged to see the U.S. president stepping up in the ways they hoped he would. It's hard to overstate the significance, for example, of seeing a U.S. president chair a meeting of the United Nations Security Council and making strides on a nuclear deal.

This is not to say Obama was honored simply because he's not Bush. The president really has committed himself to promoting counter-proliferation, reversing policies on torture, embracing a new approach to international engagement, and recommitting the U.S. to the Middle East peace process. But charting a new course for American leadership, breaking with the recent past, no doubt played a
role.

For many of President Obama's critics, it isn't so much that he hasn't done anything as it is that they don't like the things he is doing.

The Nobel Committee's statement read, in part:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values
and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

I don't think it is unfair to say that many of President Obama's critics don't like exactly those things the Nobel Committee cited in giving him the prize. For them, world opinion is something to distain not cultivate.

(To take just one example, when the US Supreme Court banned executions of mentally retarded convicts Justice Stevens cited foreign law in a footnote noting that "within the world community, the ... death penalty for crimes committed by mentally retarded offenders is overwhelmingly disapproved." Right-wingers went nuts. Over a footnote. In a scathing dissent, Justice Scalia called it "dangerous dicta" since "this court should not impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans". In her confirmation hearings, Justice Sotomayor was attacked for saying that while "[f]oreign law cannot be used as a holding or a precedent or to bind an outcome of a legal decision interpreting the constitution," American judges should not "close their minds to some good ideas".)

It might be worth recalling in this context the preface of the Declaration of Independence which asserts that "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires" that its signatories explain themselves. Talk about "dangerous dicta." Why should we care what the rest of the world thinks?

I agree with the State Department official who quipped: "Certainly from our standpoint, this gives us a sense of momentum -- when the United States has accolades tossed its way, rather than shoes."

When the pro-American conservative Sarkozy was elected president of France in 2007, Condoleeza Rice asked him what she could do to help him. "Improve your image in the world," he told her.

Coincidentally, last week, prior to the Nobel announcement, the results of the annual Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index were announced. That index measures the global image of 50 countries. NBI founder, Simon Anholt said:

"What’s really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States in 2009. Despite recent economic turmoil, the U.S. actually gained significant ground. The results suggest that the new U.S. administration has been well received abroad and the American electorate’s decision to vote in President Obama has given the United States the status of the world’s most admired country.”

Between 2008 and 2009, the US went from seventh to first. As another NBI official noted: "While most nations’ reputation does not undergo major change from year to year, the U.S. has clearly bucked the trend."

Most of the things we seek to accomplish in the world are not achieved through force or the threat of force. Mililtary might can command respect or acquiescence. But it can also engender hatred and resistance. In most of our dealings with the world it is more or less irrelevant. It is our moral leadership that is the source of our greatest power.

Most Americans, I hope, believe it is a good thing that our president received one of the world's highest honors. If the world is expressing optimism over our leadership, maybe we should, too.

the obama nobel peace prize

What passes for a political “dialogue” in this country has become so distorted by what one wag has described as the “over-the-top, tween-girl-at-a-Jonas-brothers-concert-hysteria” of the right, that I have found myself increasingly just checking out. But President Obama keeps reminding me of our better nature. I was as surprised as anyone by the announcement today that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I thought it worth taking the time to compose an essay on the subject, and I probably will still do so. But this piece by Rachel Maddow does about as good a job of it as I could hope to:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Correction:

When I dashed off this post I picked up the phrase, “the ‘over-the-top, tween-girl-at-a-Jonas-brothers-concert-hysteria’ of the right” because it had a nice ring to it. But I didn’t give it sufficient thought. As the father of two pre-tween daughters who have just discovered Beatlemania (we watched “Help” tonight), I realized upon reflection that “over-the-top, tween-girl-at-a-Jonas-brothers-concert-hysteria” is something spontaneous, fun and harmless. It’s a beautiful, innocent, joyful thing, like … a dog chasing a Frisbee. Or something. The hysteria of the right, by contrast, is calculating, cynical and hateful. It was a totally inappropriate metaphor. I apologize to tween girls.

snl on wilson

Last night NBC debuted a half-hour Thursday night version of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. The opening sketch was a great take on last week's "You lie!" outburst by Rep. Addison Graves(yet another right-wing hero not really named "Joe") Wilson Sr. Check out the first five minutes of this clip:

on the anniversay of 9-11

[I meant to write this on Friday – the eighth anniversary of the attacks of 9-11 – but I got distracted by the whole Joe Wilson matter. And it was 87 degrees in Seattle so I didn’t really feel like sitting around writing. The glorious weather continued through the weekend, and when you live on a houseboat in Seattle you don’t take good weather for granted. So I have lost a bit of the timeliness of my theme. But better that than having it go the way of most of my thoughts – transitory and undocumented.]

It is worth recalling the anniversary of 9-11 if for no other reason than to contrast it with the national mood today.

Those attacks brought the nation together. Despite the fact that Bush didn’t do much of anything immediately in response – other than to fly around the country on Air Force One trying to evade would-be attackers – his approval rate among the American people jumped to 90%. In contrast with President Obama, who won the presidency decisively, Bush had lost the popular vote by 500,000 votes and only squeaked through with an Electoral College win thanks to a partisan 5-4 Supreme Court vote (in the worst Supreme Court decision in my lifetime). If any president deserved to be treated as illegitimate, it was Bush. But the country supported him because the attacks of 9-11 reminded us that we are all, in fact, Americans. Not just autonomous individual consumption machines – but part of a larger collective. A community. A nation. And, for better or worse (worse, as it turned out), President Bush was the country’s leader.

Flags sprouted everywhere. As if the National Anthem wasn’t enough, “God Bless America” was added to the displays of patriotism at the beginning of sporting events.

Red state Americans even embraced New York City – previously viewed by many as a den of iniquity inhabited by liberals and scary brown people – as the spiritual focus of this new national unity. The Congressional vote on the Authorization For The Use of Force in Afghanistan (420 to 1 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate) was only one vote away from being unanimous, and the vote on the “USA PATRIOT Act” (357 to 66 in the House and 98 to 1 in the Senate) was overwhelming for such a sweeping and controversial piece of legislation. The country, to a degree unseen since World War II, was united.

Alas, Bush decided to take the power that a united country gave him and use it for narrow partisan and ideological purposes. Karl Rove even publicly articulated a strategy for the 2002 mid-term elections built on turning national security into a partisan “wedge” issue. It is not unfair to acknowledge that Bush was the first sitting president in the country’s history who actively sought to divide the country during a time of war (actually, two wars, which continue to this day). Incredible. The nation’s leader at a time of war actively seeking to divide the country for partisan gain. For that alone, Bush will almost certainly go down as the worst president in history.

Those attempts to divide the country succeeded. Many of the most ardent “patriots” in the aftermath of 9-11 are today, against all rationality, insisting that our democratically-elected leader is not even an American. They are taking guns to public meetings held by our elected officials and even by our president. They are equating our government to the worst regimes in the history of mankind. Even some governors are talking nonsense about “secession.” (I’ve been taking to quoting Gail Collins a lot lately. I loved her line last week that, “there are some patriots who love the country so much that they would like to see their state secede from the union.”) Every day, it seems, new lows of incivility and outright craziness are reached. It is hard to attribute that to the prospect of extending health insurance to most of those Americans who currently lack it. Rather, I fear it is a new tribalism based on political party, ideology, and even race. Instead of a nation “indivisible” we are at risk of becoming a collection of warring tribes.

I attribute much of this to an anti-government ideology that has gripped the country for the past 30 years, metastasizing like a cancer. Government has its limitations and potential dangers. We need to guard against its excesses just as we need to be cognizant of the limitations and potential excesses of the market and concentrated corporate power. Neither government nor the market are inherently good or evil. They are both means not ends. Like any instrument of humanity, they can be used for either good or evil. But this notion that the government of the United States of America is our enemy is unhealthy and destructive. I fear it has increasingly undermined our ability as a society to achieve great or even basic, necessary things.

A Republican friend recently sent me a collection of anti-government quotations from Ronald Reagan with the subject line of the email, “Do you miss this guy?” (with the implication being that we should). There was a time (maybe while reading Ayn Rand as a college sophomore) when those quotations might have seemed wise or at least amusing. Now I find them … well, sophomoric.

And, then, there was the definitive anti-government quote from Reagan:

‘Government is not the solution to our problems; it is the problem.’

Well, Reagan may have thought that government was the problem, but a year ago when the global financial system was melting down, it was the only solution. Ignoring the lessons learned during the Great Depression and dismantling financial regulation to free the “animal spirits” of Wall Street didn’t work out too well.

Eight years ago, we were all proud to be Americans. Our neighbors were our fellow country men and women. Today, right-wingers profess their hatred of our government. But it was that government that won World War II and the Cold War. It was our government that built the interstate highway system and the Internet. It was our government that harnessed the power of the atom and put a man on the moon. It was our government that brought about rural electrification and built the Western water projects that made it possible for millions of people to live in deserts like Southern California, Nevada and Arizona. It was our government that created the first national parks (the subject of a new 12-hour Ken Burn series), setting aside special places like Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon for future generations to enjoy (and those were controversial decisions at the time, as “conservatives” thought the government had no business putting such places off limits to exploitation – the Seattle Times recently had a good column on the bitter fight to create Mount Rainier National Park).

It was the GI Bill after World War II that sent a generation to college and allowed them to own their own homes and laid the foundation for the post-War prosperity and the creation of a broad middle class.

And, yes, our government enacted revolutionary social policies like universal public education, the 40 hour work week, repeal of child labor, the minimum wage, Social Security, and Medicare (the latter two allowing Americans to grow old without fear of living in abject poverty with no health care). We also gave women the vote and passed laws making it illegal to discriminate against minority groups and women. The Civil Rights laws had to be enforced by the Federal Government against states that had institutionalized racial discrimination. (The result, as we know, is that the Southern states went from being solidly Democratic to being solidly Republican because many citizens of those states resented – and to this day still resent – the federal government forcing them to stop their apartheid policies.) We also passed laws to clean up our air and water – something “free markets” left to themselves can’t do because individual and corporate polluters don’t bear most of the costs of their polluting activities. (Yesterday’s New York Times had an epic piece of journalism on the degradation of our nation’s drinking water and the lack of enforcement of our clean water laws over recent years.) All these things were opposed by anti-government “conservatives” at the time. Yet most Americans couldn’t imagine going back to the way it was before these government-led social reforms. (Indeed, much of the focus of anti-government protests this summer was to “keep the government’s hands off our Medicare.” Only in America could the defense of a major government program against any changes become integrated into anti-government ideology.)

I am proud of all these things (I’m sure you could think of a lot more). The “government” of the United States of America is not my enemy. The anti-government ideology that has taken root over the past 30 years is the source of much of the cynicism and hostility toward our government that has made it almost impossible for us to collectively tackle big problems – like extending health insurance to the tens of millions of Americans who currently lack it. Imagine someone proposing the interstate highway system today. (A comparable contemporary equivalent might be a massive effort to wean ourselves from carbon-based fuels in favor of renewable sources of energy. Or even something more modest like a national system of high-speed rail. This is hardly cutting-edge stuff. Japan built the first “bullet trains” in the 1960’s. Even Spain now has trains that can run at over 220 miles per hour as part of what will become a network of 10,000 miles of high-speed rail lines. But we have our anti-government ideology and a lot of worthless mortgage-backed securities.)

This anti-government ideology may have reached its most extreme manifestation four years ago in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Those images of New Orleans are what it looks like to be “on your own” with an anti-government crony in charge of disaster relief.

Imagine proposing universal public education today (one of the best bits of President Obama’s speech on health care last week was his defense of a “public option” for health insurance by citing the fact that “public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities”). There is no way you could enact Social Security or Medicare in today’s ideological environment.

I recently saw a Vietnam vet wearing a t-shirt with an eagle and a flag that said, “Freedom Isn’t Free.” I thought that would make a great bumper sticker with the addition of the phrase, “That’s why we have to pay taxes.” Whenever I receive an email urging us to honor the sacrifices of our service men and women I’m tempted to reply, “That’s why not whining about paying your taxes is, literally, the least you can do.”

On the anniversary of 9-11 it is worth recalling that the firefighters and police officers we celebrated as heroes as were government workers (and unionized government workers at that). The victims of the Pentagon attack we mourned were “federal government bureaucrats”. And when we pledged allegiance to the flag it was to “the Republic for which it stands.”

There are a lot of important things that we can’t accomplish solely by us all acting on our own as autonomous, selfish little consumers. President Obama has inherited huge problems. Not everything he does will work out well. But that is true of all human endeavor. Growth and change are what makes a person, an organization or a country strong. The government of the United States of America is our government. It is a means for accomplishing a lot of things that couldn’t be accomplished any other way. If we are blinded by ideology to its potential, we sacrifice much of our potential as a community and, yes, even as individuals.

lies (and the lying liars who tell them)

President Obama gave a brilliant speech Wednesday night. If you didn’t watch it, do so (you can watch the video here). And it appears to have had a significant impact on public support for health care reform. According to a CBS poll released today, support for President Obama’s approach to health care reform has gone from a net -7 (40/47) to a net + 14 (52/38). That’s an impressive move in the numbers. And it was deserved.



I suspect a big part of the reason for the move in the poll numbers was President Obama’s forceful refutation of some of the more spectacular right-wing lies about what he is, in fact, proposing. It is not a “government takeover of health care.” It would not mandate end-of-life counseling or create “death panels” that would pull the plug on granny. And it would not extent government subsidized health care to illegal immigrants.

As everyone in the world now knows, it was while President Obama was making the latter point that one particularly boorish Republican member of Congress heckled the president like some teabagger at a Town Hall freak show. As Gail Collins noted, “Let me go out on a limb and say that it is not a good plan to heckle the president of the United States when he’s making a speech about replacing acrimony with civility.”

Joe Wilson’s antics were only the most egregious display of disrespect toward the President of the United States Wednesday night. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor typed away on his Blackberry while the Commander-in-Chief spoke to Congress. Other Republicans held up hand-lettered signs or waved copies of something or other. All-in-all, you would be hard-pressed to find a more dyspeptic group of old white men. The school children listening to President Obama’s education speech on Tuesday were infinitely better behaved.

(Andy Borowitz has a good take on the Wilson incident.)

But Wilson broke new ground for rudeness during a joint session of Congress. At least that’s the official word from Deputy House Historian Fred Beuttler who said that while it is not uncommon for members of Congress to cheer or jeer during a presidential speech, an individual outburst from a member of Congress is unprecedented. And in calling the president a liar, Wilson also broke House rules. (Defenders of Wilson are pointing with approval to the rowdy behavior often displayed in Britain’s House of Commons. But the one thing you can’t shout at an opponent in the House of Commons is that he or she is a liar.)

This is all part of the current Republican effort to de-legitimize President Obama. As Richard Cohen notes in the New York Times:

[President Obama’s] illegitimacy continues to be questioned by the “birthers,” who insist he is not a native-born American, who demand to see the president’s birth certificate, and then, when they see it, insist it cannot be genuine. Neither evidence nor facts will dissuade them because they are the throes of an irrationality based on bigotry. An American president must be -- ought to be -- white.

Some of the same ugly feeling was present in the House chamber Wednesday night. … The Party of Rudeness had outdone itself.

Is it really too much to suggest that Wilson’s outburst was, at its heart, part of this racist denial of President Obama’s legitimacy? Look at the messenger. Wilson started his political career as an aide to Senator Strom Thurmond, who ran for president in 1948 as the segregationist party candidate. Wilson later attacked Thurmond’s illegitimate African-American daughter when it was revealed that she was fathered when Thurmond raped her mother, the Thurmond family’s 16-year old maid. “Sometimes these things just go on,” Wilson said, and it was “unseemly” for Thurmond’s daughter to publicly reveal that fact. Wilson said that Thurmond was his “hero” and it was wrong to “diminish” his legacy. (Wilson was forced to offer up a faux “apology” for that incident, too.)

Need more? Wilson is (or was) also a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization that has been “taken over in the past decade by radical neo-Confederates who favor secession and defend slavery as a benign institution.” And as a state legislator he was one of only seven Republicans to go against his own party and vote to keep the Dixie Rebel flag flying over the state capitol:

The flag came down that year after Republicans in both houses went for a compromise that would put it on Statehouse grounds at the Confederate Soldier’s monument. The “Magnificent Seven” of Senators who voted to keep the flag up included current Congressman Joe Wilson …

It’s not like Wilson is some sort of aberration in his party. Incredibly, the previously little-known member of Congress that Republicans chose to deliver their response to President Obama Wednesday night, Rep. Charles Boustany of Louisiana, is himself a “Birther” who has asserted that “there are questions” about President Obama’s country of birth. (Ironically, Boustany was also a co-sponsor of the “Life Sustaining Treatment Preferences Act of 2009” which would mandate that Medicare reimburse the cost of end-of-life counseling -- the so-called "death panels.") But Boustany’s “Birther” views are probably pretty mainstream in Louisiana where, as I noted before (“serious bad craziness”), only 14% of whites voted for President Obama. (The New York Times has an article today about how the unpopularity of President Obama among whites in Louisiana has revived the re-election prospects of “family-values” Republican Senator “Diaper Dave” Vitter, who was identified as a client of a Washington prostitution ring with a fetish for … shall we say, “being Pampered.”) Boustany, a doctor, was also sued for malpractice eight times and, in a bizarre twist, attempted to buy a “Lordship Title” from British scam artists. Is Boustany really the best representative of the party Republicans could come up with?

In all the media frenzy over Wilson’s boorish behavior, there has been almost no commentary on the substance of his accusation. As is typical with the mainstream media, the coverage was almost entirely about the “controversy” over Wilson’s antics with the underlying substance of the matter ignored as irrelevant (or treated in a “he said/she said” manner as if there was legitimately “two sides” to the matter). But as Factcheck.org, Politifact, Media Matters, and others have noted, it was Wilson himself who was lying when he accused President Obama of lying on the subject of whether health care reform would extend government subsidized health care to illegal immigrants. While there is, as yet, no final health care reform bill, the bill that has passed the House Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee is the one that everyone seems to be treating as “the” health care plan (at least for purposes of demonizing it). It specifically states (in Section 246 on page 143) that no subsidies may go to any immigrant in the country illegally. And there are decent enforcement mechanisms for that (the subsidies take the form of a tax credit which requires the filing of a tax return with a valid Social Security number which is not available to an illegal immigrant).

When not talking to their crazy base but actually pressed by the mainstream media, Republicans spouting the illegal immigrants lie resort to defending their claim by saying that there is nothing in current bills that would prevent illegal immigrants from using their own money to buy unsubsidized health insurance on the proposed “exchanges.” Well, uh, OK. So? That is not “providing government health care to illegal immigrants” or any of the other nonsense that is being propagated by Republicans. According to the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center, half of all illegal immigrants currently have private health insurance. It’s a good thing that they are buying health insurance with their own money. Is it better that they end up in emergency rooms as public wards? The claim that this consists of government health care is like saying the auto bailout amounts to the government giving cars to illegal immigrants because nothing in the bailout outlaws illegal immigrants buying cars. (Come to think of it, the auto claim would have more validity than the health care claim because autos made by GM and Chrysler are arguably subsidized, unlike health insurance that an illegal immigrant might purchase on an exchange. And anyone in the world is free to by an auto made GM or Chrysler. Therefore it is a subsidy to illegal immigrants.)

This lie about health reform extending subsidized coverage to illegal immigrants is official Republican party-line doctrine, being repeated even by supposed “moderates” like Chuck Grassley, who is part of the “Gang of Six” on the Senate Finance Committee that has kept legislation bottled up for months. Grassley said, “The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences, including making taxpayers fund health care subsidies for illegal immigrants.” (The “moderate” Grassley also piled on to the “Obama is going to kill granny” lie, saying, “You have every right to fear. You shouldn't have counseling at the end of life, you should have done that 20 years before. You should not have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma.” But, like Boustany, Grassley previously voted to extend Medicare funding to “counseling … with respect to end-of-life issues and care options, and … advanced care planning.” In other words, Grassley was “for Death Panels before he was against them.”)

[There seems to be some kind of crazy contest going on within the Republican Party today. Senator Inhofe today joined the ranks of the Birthers. And “moderate” Minnesota Governor Pawlenty seems to be embracing the old Confederate concept of “nullification” whereby a state can choose to defy federal law. This was, of course, in the context of health care reform. In fairness, Pawlenty didn’t go as far as Texas Governor Rick Perry who suggested he might support his state seceding from the Union. But he is prepared to fight for the right to deny health care to uninsured Americans.]

And you wonder why “bipartisanship” is going nowhere. It’s pretty hard to “compromise” when it comes to outright lies. Does anyone really believe President Obama will garner Republican support by meeting them half way and going just “half crazy”?

Even giving an inspirational talk to America’s school children is seen by the right as evidence of Obama’s totalitarian aspirations. The “fair and balanced” FOX News talking heads called President Obama’s speech to school children “indoctrination” (host Sean Hannity) and the “type of thing [they do] in North Korea and the former Soviet Union ... very cultish” (regular commentator Andrea Tantaros) and compared him to “Chairman Mao” (regular commentator Monica Crowley) and Mussolini (host Glenn Beck). According to Laura Ingraham (substituting for Bill O’Reilly) this is something “no other president has done.”

Never mind that Reagan gave a nationally broadcast speech to schoolchildren where he spewed his anti-government ideology (you can see a video clip here), including this ideological nonsense about lower tax rates resulting in higher revenue:

Because you see, the taxes can be such a penalty on people that there's no incentive for them to prosper and to earn more and so forth because they have to give so much to the government. And what we have found is that at the lower rates the government gets more revenue, there are more people paying taxes because there are more people with jobs and there are more people willing to earn more money because they get to keep a bigger share of it, so today, we're getting more revenue at the lower rates than we were at the higher.

(In fact, between the time Reagan cut taxes and Clinton raised them again in 1993, the federal debt more than quadrupled from less than a trillion dollars to four trillion dollars. Quadrupled. By the time Reagan was preaching this anti-government propaganda to schoolchildren in 1988 he had already almost tripled the national debt.)

Give President Obama credit for another first: The first black man to be attacked for urging children to work hard and stay in school. It didn’t take long for Republicans to go from, “If you criticize the president you are a traitor,” to “School children shouldn’t be allowed to listen to the President of the United States of America.” Wasn’t it just last year Republicans were taking the position that the President could unilaterally disregard laws against torture and the right of Habeas Corpus enshrined in the Constitution as long as he claimed to be doing so in his capacity as commander in chief?

Not surprisingly, Wilson has become a hero of the right. Republican ideological overlord Rush Limbaugh has said he wished Wilson had not apologized. But it’s OK – apparently Wilson didn’t really mean it. He is out today with an unrepentant fundraising appeal, saying “I will not be muzzled. I will speak up loudly against this risky plan. … The supporters of the government takeover of health care and the liberals who want to give health care to illegals are using my opposition as an excuse to distract from the critical questions being raised about this poorly conceived plan. They want to silence anyone who speaks out against it. They made it clear they want to defeat me and pass the plan.”

I have joined over 25,000 fellow Americans who have in the past 36 hours donated a total of over $1,000,000 to Wilson’s Democratic opponent, Rob Miller, a retired Marine and Iraq war veteran. That’s more than the $600,000 Miller raised in the entire 2008 campaign cycle when he lost to Wilson 54 to 46 despite being outspent by 2 to 1. And there is a PPP poll out today taken in the aftermath of Wilson’s outburst Wednesday night that shows Miller leading him 44 to 43. (You, too, can donate to Rob Miller here. Go ahead – even if it is only ten bucks.)

Fight crazy. Support the President.