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Evening Fix

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Lee Drutman


Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Lee Drutman

Our top five reads of the day:

  • Kevin Carey makes the case for a new batch of public universities to explore new approaches: “Most industries are constantly enlivened by new entrants that design their processes and cultures in ways that reflect the latest available technology and wisdom and serve the needs of today’s customers. As the amount of time since most colleges and universities were created continues to lengthen, higher education will increasingly suffer from the lack of such competition and renewal in the traditional public and private non-profit sector.”
  • Juliette Jowit reports on former climate skeptic Bjørn Lomborg’s new recommendation to spend $100 billion a year on climate: “Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as “cloud whitening” to reflect the sun’s heat back into the outer atmosphere.”
  • Mark Thoma calls for a fiscal policy that can avoid congressional gridlock –automatic stabilizers: “Automatic stabilizers are a tried and true means of stabilizing the economy. Increased reliance upon this type of stabilization could help solve the political problems that prevent Congress from responding effectively when the economy is most in need of help.”
  • Steve Clemons explores the progress towards and makes the case for the U.S. providing more flood relief to Pakistan: “Now that we are spending monthly figures in Afghanistan that surpass $100 billion per year, it seems to me that a well-managed $1 billion investment in Pakistan would do much to improve the political environment in Afghanistan and Pakistan — large portions of the peoples of which respectively mistrust the U.S.”
  • Jon Hilkevitch reports on a battle in the Illinois State Legislature over high-speed rail: “Bullet trains routinely operate at 150 to 220 mph. It’s the performance level Illinois should be shooting for, said state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D- Chicago, who is chairman of the Illinois Senate Transportation Committee.”

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A Timeline: Obama and Iraq

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Just after President finishes his Oval Office speech on Iraq (and because they’re somewhat linked, Afghanistan), you may flip to your favorite cable news channel and listen to your favorite talking head or two banter on about the war’s history.  In an effort to set the record straight, here’s a quick guide to Barack Obama’s political history with Iraq (and by extension Afghanistan). If you want to a more detailed timeline, you can click over to the Washington Post, which has a good interactive map and timeline.  Or you can check out my new favorite site, LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com.

Here’s the bottom line: After reading just about ever single speech Obama has given on Iraq since 2002, he has been remarkably consistent for a politician.

He opposed the war, while being explicit that he’s comfortable with the use of force. He’s been steadfast that Bush was screwing around in Iraq while he should have been concentrating in Afghanistan.  Hence, this administration’s current policy is the continuation of Obama’s thinking since 2002.

However, once we were in Iraq, he recognized America’s ongoing national security concerns, and sought to promote debate on striking the balance between responsibility, national interest, and political reality.  Even though Obama opposed the surge, it was not because he was uncomfortable with using force, but because he felt that the threat of removing US troops would force political cooperation amongst Iraqi governing stakeholders.

Throughout his campaign, he stayed on message about bringing the war to a “responsible conclusion” a pledge that he has largely fulfilled.

The future is murky: Violence may return to haunt Iraq as the remaining troops are pulled out over the next 17 months (as George Bush’s 2008 SOFA dictates).   While a new Iraq government may request that continued presence of American forces past the 2011 deadline, it is dubious whether Obama, in the midst of a re-election bid, would reopen such a divisive arguement, particularly as America’s national security interests seem long-since secured.

Here are the details:

October 2, 2002: On the eve of a Congressional resolution authorizing President George Bush to use force in Iraq, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama gives a speech at a Chicago Anti-War Rally. Here’s what he said:

Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. …

After September 11th… I supported this [Bush] Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance. … I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war.

October 12, 2004: In a debate for his Illinois Senate seat against Republican Alan Keyes, Obama said this of Iraq and Afghanistan:

Ambassador Keyes and I agree on one thing, and that is that the War on Terror has to be

vigorously fought. Where we part company is how to fight it, because I think Afghanistan in fact was not a preemptive war, it was a war launched directly against those who were responsible for 9-11. Iraq was a preemptive war based on faulty evidence. … Now, us having gone in there, I do think we now have a deep national security interest in making certain that Iraq is stable. If is it not stable, not only are we going to have a humanitarian crisis, I think we are also going to have a huge national security problem on our ands—because, ironically, it has become a hotbed of terrorists consequence, in part, of our incursion there.

November 22, 2005. A speech to the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations found Obama in a reflective mood:

What do we want to accomplish now that we are in Iraq, and what is possible to accomplish? What kind of actions can we take to ensure not only a safe and stable Iraq, but that will also preserve our capacity to rebuild Afghanistan, isolate and apprehend terrorist cells, preserve our long-term military readiness, and devote the resources needed to shore up our homeland security?

[G]iven the enormous stakes in Iraq, I believe that those of us who are involved in shaping our national security policies should do what we believe is right, not merely what is politically expedient….

But I believe that, having waged a war that has unleashed daily carnage and uncertainty in Iraq, we have to manage our exit in a responsible way – with the hope of leaving a stable foundation for the future, but at the very least taking care not to plunge the country into an even deeper and, perhaps, irreparable crisis.

January 9, 2006. Senator Obama podcast following a trip to Baghdad:

I think the general view was that we were in such a delicate situation right now and that there was so little institutional capacity on the part of the Iraqi government, that a full military withdrawal at this point would probably result in significant civil war and potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths.

January 25, 2006. Senator Obama podcast following post-trip meeting with George Bush:

I believe we need to bring our troops home as quickly as possible, but to do so in a way that does not precipitate all out civil war in Iraq.

On February 22, 2006, the Sumarra Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, is bombed.  The repercussions set off a spiral of increasing violence that many call a civil war.

June 26, 2006. Senator Obama floor statement on Iraq following proposed Kerry Amendment, which called for redeployment of troops.

I would like nothing more than to support the Kerry Amendment; to bring our brave troops home on a date certain, and spare the American people more pain, suffering and sorrow.

But having visited Iraq, I’m also acutely aware that a precipitous withdrawal of our troops, driven by Congressional edict rather than the realities on the ground, will not undo the mistakes made by this Administration. It could compound them. …

I do not believe that setting a date certain for the total withdrawal of U.S. troops is the best approach to achieving, in a methodical and responsible way, the three basic goals that should drive our Iraq policy: that is, 1) stabilizing Iraq and giving the factions within Iraq the space they need to forge a political settlement; 2) containing and ultimately defeating the insurgency in Iraq; and 3) bringing our troops safely home.

…

I cannot support the Kerry Amendment. Instead, I am a cosponsor of the Levin amendment, which gives us the best opportunity to find this balance between our need to begin a phase-down and our need to help stabilize Iraq.

November 20, 2006. Senator Obama speaks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs:

The President should announce to the Iraqi people that our policy will include a gradual and substantial reduction in U.S. forces. He should then work with our military commanders to map out the best plan for such a redeployment and determine precise levels and dates. … [I]t could be suspended if at any point U.S. commanders believe that a further reduction would put American troops in danger. …

Perhaps most importantly, some of these troops could be redeployed to Afghanistan, where our lack of focus and commitment of resources has led to an increasing deterioration of the security situation there. The President’s decision to go to war in Iraq has had disastrous consequences for Afghanistan — we have seen a fierce Taliban offensive, a spike in terrorist attacks, and a narcotrafficking problem spiral out of control.

In January 2007, George Bush announced ‘the Surge’, which Obama opposed. Here’s a video. Here’s what Obama said in a Senate floor statement:

The President’s decision to move forward with this escalation anyway, despite all evidence and military advice to the contrary, is the terrible consequence of the decision to give him the broad, open-ended authority to wage this war back in 2002…. I cannot in good conscience support this escalation.

Drawing down our troops in Iraq will put pressure on Iraqis to arrive at the political settlement that is needed and allow us to redeploy additional troops in Afghanistan… My plan would couple this phased redeployment with an enhanced effort to train Iraqi security forces.

As the political narrative tells us, “the surge worked.” However, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that three events really helped bring about a de-escalation in violence in Iraq in 2007.  Read this op-ed from my friend Michael Kleinman on what really happened.

October 2, 2007.  Early in the presidential campaign, Senator Obama pledges to bring home troops within 16 months of taking office:

I will begin to remove our troops from Iraq immediately. I will remove one or two brigades a month and get all of our combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months. The only troops I will keep in Iraq will perform the limited missions of protecting our diplomats and carrying out targeted strikes on Al Qaeda.

November 19, 2008. Just before leaving office, George Bush negotiates a new Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government.  It calls for US troops to be out of Iraq’s cities and towns by mid-2009 and out of the country altogether by the end of 2011.  Read the entire SOFA here.  Obama’s campaign timeline is more-or-less in line with Bush’s.

January 21, 2009. Just after taking office, President Obama met with military leaders and asked them to draw up a 16-month withdrawal plan from Iraq.

February 27, 2009. Obama tells Congressional leaders that he’s planning to pull all combat troops out of Iraq by August 2010. That 19 month time-line is three longer than his campaign promise. He tells lawmakers that he intends to keep 35,000-50,000 non-combat forces in the country for training and force protection. Some Democratic Congressional members are upset at the remaining forces; Generals Petraeus and Odierno are supportive.

August 25, 2010: U.S. troop numbers in Iraq at 49,700.

photo credit: U.S. Army’s photostream

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Posted in A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Issues | 4 Comments »

No surprises in West Virginia, Louisiana

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

It’s another Tuesday, and believe it or not, there are no primaries today!  In fact, the next batch is not until September 14, when seven states plus the District of Columbia hold elections. This last weekend, however, voters in Louisiana and West Virginia went to the polls, with the latter limited to a special primary election for the late Robert Byrd’s Senate seat.

West Virginia

The results there were absolutely predictable, with Gov. Joe Manchin easily defeating Ken Hechler for the Democratic nod, and 2008 Senate nominee Jon Raese winning the Republican bid without breaking a sweat. Given the refusal of better-known Republicans to take on Manchin, this contest will provide a pretty good test of generic Republican strength in a red-leaning state where Democrats have often dominated in non-presidential elections.

Louisiana

Down in Louisiana, Senate candidates David Vitter (R) and Charlie Melancon (D) had no trouble winning their parties’ nominations.  The more interesting contests were in two House districts.  In LA-02, where Republican Joseph Cao pulled off a flukey win in 2008 over the ethically challenged Bill Jefferson, state legislator Cedric Richmond (D), the well-financed consensus choice of both New Orleans and DC Democrats, easily won the nomination without a runoff.  This is perhaps the ripest Democratic House pickup opportunity in the nation.  But in Melancon’s LA-03, a ripe Republican pickup opportunity, front-runner Jeff Landry, the beneficiary of Tea Party and Christian Right support, just missed avoiding a October 2 runoff against former state House Speaker Hunt Downer.   The runoff will boost the uphill candidacy of Democrat Ravi Sangisetty, who has raised an impressive amount of money.

Alaska

A major bit of unfinished business from last Tuesday’s primaries continued to play out today, as Alaska election officials began to count an estimated 25,000 absentee and provisional ballots.  Former judge Joe Miller leads incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski by 1,668 votes, and things are getting nasty already with Miller’s campaign alleging vote-tampering by the Murkowski camp.  On another front, the Alaska Libertarian Party decided against offering Murkowski its ballot line should she lose the GOP nomination. That means her options would be limited to a write-in campaign.  The Libertarian action was bad news for Democratic candidate Scott McAdams, though the hatefulness surrounding the Republican contest could still give him an opening.

Delaware

Meanwhile, in Delaware (another Senate contest where Republicans were assumed to have a virtual lock, in Delaware) the Tea Party Express has decided to weigh in on behalf of insurgent conservative candidate Christine O’Donnell, who is challenging Republican party establishment favorite Mike Castle.

New Hampshire

Similarly, in NH, longtime front-running Republican Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte may be getting nervous following the endorsement of hard-core conservative Ovide Lamontagne by the New Hampshire (nee Manchester) Union-Leader.  Democrat Paul Hodes has been leading Lamontagne in general election test heats.

North Carolina

And in yet another race often conceded to Republicans, a new PPP survey of NC (which involved a switchover by PPP from registered to likely voters) shows Democrat Elaine Marshall hanging in there against Sen. Richard Burr, trailing him 43-38 with 6% going to a Libertarian candidate.

It would be ironic, to say the least, if Democratic control of the Senate were saved by unlikely wins in Alaska, Delaware or North Carolina (not to mention Nevada, where most observers wrote off Harry Reid as early as last year), but it’s always possible.

Florida

And then there’s Florida, where two recent polls have shown Charlie Crist falling significantly behind Marco Rubio.  Crist is in real danger of losing crucial Democratic support to freshly minted nominee Kendrick Meek, and is dancing around the key question of which party he would caucus with in the Senate.

The game of predicting Republican House gains is intensifying as we get closer to November, and this week GOPers are buzzing over a new Gallup House generic ballot poll that shows them with a ten point lead, the largest in Gallup history.  But as Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal explains, this result looks a lot like a random-noise outlier, particularly when you compare it to the most recent Newsweek generic ballot poll, which shows the two parties tied.  The overall trendlines, though, are hardly comforting for Democrats.

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Posted in Daily Fix, Political Memo | 1 Comment »

Will There Be a “Volcker Plan” for Corporate Tax Cuts?

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Scott Thomasson


Scott Thomasson is the economic and domestic policy director for the Progressive Policy Institute. Follow @st_ppi

by Scott Thomasson

On Friday, I wrote about the current tax debate and bemoaned the failure of Democrats to frame the debate around a more comprehensive proposal of their own, instead of just talking about a more progressive version of the Bush tax cuts.  I concluded with my hope that President Obama will put forward his own package of broad, pro-growth reforms to do just that.

Since then, I have two new reasons for hope.  First, on Friday afternoon, the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB), chaired by Paul Volcker, released a long-overdue report on tax reform proposals.  Then President Obama said Monday that his team is weighing “additional measures” to move the economy forward, including both extension of expiring middle-class tax and “further tax cuts to encourage businesses to put their capital to work creating jobs here in the United States.”  It’s not much to go on, but the president promised more details on these “proposals” in the days and weeks to come.

Looking at these two news items together, are there clues in Friday’s report to what the president is planning?  I think there are.  Obama chose to mention putting capital to work, which is different than simply talking about putting people to work.  I may be reading too much into it (no doubt from watching too much Rubicon), but the president’s choice of words suggests to me that he’s chosen an approach based on corporate income tax incentives, rather than alternatives like payroll tax cuts to boost hiring, which has been suggested at various times by Republicans, Democrats, and both.  The corporate income approach would be consistent with options laid out in Friday’s report, which looks at the benefits of corporate income tax changes and treatment of corporate operations overseas, but not other things like payroll taxes.

Drawing from the Volcker report, my best guess is that the president will offer a version of the “direct expensing” proposal to increase incentives for new capital investments.  This seems like an easy choice to argue for stimulating demand and getting larger companies to spend the piles of cash they have been sitting on.  Plus, it complements the administration’s push for more spending on clean energy and infrastructure, two priorities the president also mentioned as additional measures on Monday.  But the real reason I’m betting on this option is the marketing.  As the report acknowledges, “direct expensing” is really just “accelerated depreciation” on steroids (insert Rocket joke of the day here), but giving it a new-ish name and taking it to a new extreme are classic markings of the kind of political repackaging Obama may be looking for right now.

If I let my optimism go completely unchecked, I can also interpret the president’s sentence fragment as a sign he’s prepared for more comprehensive corporate tax reform—taking up the Volcker report’s suggestions for simplifying and reducing corporate rates to incentivize investment and make U.S. more globally competitive.  Unlikely, I admit.  However, the tone and substance of the report’s chapters on corporate tax reform do match up in many respects to Obama’s rhetoric about “putting capital to work” and “creating jobs here in the United States.”  These two themes apply to the predicted benefits of several options included in the report:

  • Lowering marginal corporate rates will make the U.S. more competitive relative to other developed nations (we currently have the second-highest rates in the world).
  • Lowering marginal rates will encourage companies to build and create jobs by reducing the cost of capital for new investment and reduces incentives to use debt to finance new spending.
  • Lost revenues from lower rates can be replaced by eliminating special-interest giveaways and tax expenditures, thereby broadening the base and reducing inefficient corporate subsidies and market distortions.
  • With lower marginal rates, it will be possible to deal rationally with income earned by U.S. corporations overseas and end the nonsense system of deferring repatriation of earnings to avoid high U.S. taxes.

It’s true that the report is short on specifics and estimates for the options it proposes, which has prompted some to pronounce the entire effort as a missed opportunity for comprehensive reform.  This might be true in the sense that Volcker and company could have provided more concrete numbers for the president to cite (and for his opponents to distort), and they could have taken it upon themselves to go beyond what was asked of them and issue an urgent call to arms for overhauling the tax code.  They didn’t do either of those things.  Instead, they did what they were supposed to do: create an opportunity for the president to do whatever he wants with the report.

That the report is so non-committal doesn’t mean it isn’t part of a larger strategy. Thinking big without announcing a hard-and-fast position to fight for from the outset is classic Obama (can I already say “classic” less than two years into his presidency?).  When Obama actually comes out in favor of specific proposals, he frequently likes to do it without telegraphing his punch, as was the case the last time he teamed up with Paul Volcker to endorse the Volcker Rule.  So it’s conceivable that both the timing and the tone of this report were planned by the White House—not simply to be ignored and forgotten in the doldrums of August, but to quietly lay the groundwork to support a new tax proposal this fall.

Most of the smart money has been on Congress waiting until after the elections to take up taxes, but that leaves a lot of time for Republicans to pound away at the president’s tax plan and for Democrats to splinter off from the administration’s plan to partially extend the Bush tax cuts.  The next couple weeks seems like as good a time as any for Obama to stand with Paul Volcker in a Rose Garden press conference to announce the new “Volcker Plan” for corporate tax cuts.  You heard it here first.

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Posted in A New Framework for Growth and Equity, Daily Fix, Issues | 2 Comments »

Evening Fix

Monday, August 30th, 2010
Lee Drutman


Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Lee Drutman

Our top five reads of the day:

  • Mike Mandel laments the wasteful asset allocation of the 2000s: “Here’s a chart that to me sums up the past decade.  This was supposed to be the Information Revolution…but what we mostly did was build homes.”
  • The Economist examines the conundrums of cutting military spending: “Mr Gates is grappling with the conundrum faced by many of his predecessors: the rising costs of military manpower and equipment, which strain even America’s gargantuan $700 billion defence budget (almost as much as the defence spending of the rest of the world put together). Just to keep up America’s existing combat units, he notes, costs 2-3% more each year.”
  • E.J. Dionne Jr. urges President Obama to be a better salesman for a coherent governing philosophy: “In a democracy, separating governing from “politicking” is impossible. “Politicking” is nothing less than the ongoing effort to convince free citizens of the merits of a set of ideas, policies and decisions. Voters feel better about politicians who put what they are doing in a compelling context.”
  • Derek Thompson makes an argument for Social Security Reform now: “Social Security isn’t unique. It taxes something we think is good (wages) to pay for something we also think is good (seniors’ benefits), just like the rest of the federal budget. We’re not going to find a full-body solution to our debt problem in December, or in 2011, or in 2012. We should not even try. But we have to start somewhere. Let’s start with the backbone.”
  • Jonathan Weber explores the obstacles standing in the way of high-speed rail in California: “High-speed rail is at a critical juncture, and poses a test for Bay Area communities, and indeed for the state as a whole: Do we still have the political mettle, the financial wherewithal and the engineering competence to execute something on this scale?”

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“Middle East Week” Kicks Off: Five Things To Watch

Monday, August 30th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

For the first time in 20 months, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will sit down face-to-face in Washington, DC this week.  Building on a year and a half of shuttle diplomacy “proximity talks” shepherded by George Mitchell, the White House’s Middle East envoy, this Wednesday, September 1, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will sit down with his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas.

There’s been broad skepticism surrounding these talks from the get-go.  Is the Obama administration convening talks for domestic political reasons within a pessimistic geo-political environment, or because there’s actual hope?  My colleague Will Marshall shares this decidedly luke-warm take: “It’s not hard to find grounds for pessimism,” he wrote last week here on ProgressiveFix.

Here are five ways to gauge the talks’ success:

1. Cameras
Yes, yes – a press conference ain’t much, what with the security and happiness of millions hanging in the balance.  But the mere act of holding a joint press conference with Obama stewarding Abbas and Netanyahu at least indicates the talks were a basis for some extraordinarily cautious optimism.  It would be better than, say, both leaders departing quietly in the middle of the night without so much as a word to the cameras.  But this is the low bar the situation demands.

2. Netanyahu’s position on the settlement moratorium
Upon assuming office last year, Netayahu issued a 10-month moratorium on construction in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.  It is due to expire in late September, and Netanyahu, facing right-wing pressure from within his coalition, has said that building will resume.

It is, of course, a shame that the extraordinarily complex issue of where and how to build settlements has been reduced to the binary choice of “build” or “don’t build”.  That’s why if Netanyahu, fresh off a positive meeting with Obama in July, can finesse his pledge to continue construction (and please his political base) while giving ground somewhere to show the Palestinians and Obama that he’s serious, we might be in business.

3. Level of buy-in from the “moderate” Middle Eastern countries
Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are planning to attend.  While neither leader is on extraordinarily solid political ground domestically (which may turn out to be the understatement of the year for Mubarak, who faces a potentially explosive election), Abbas needs their blessing to create breathing room with the likes of the nay-sayers in the Arab League, who are already predicting failure but remain generally supportive of talks because of Obama’s “sincerity”.  Building an Arab coalition around a deal is key, so watch whether they are vocally supportive of the meeting and what message they take back home.

4. A statement from Hillary Clinton
She’ll be the direct intermediary between the two, so watch her closely. Everything from body-language to expression to the actual words out of her mouth will be important.  If there’s a tense, negative air surrounding the talks, the Secretary might just literally embody them.

5. Reactions in Israeli press
Israel has a wide selection of English language publications of good quality, like the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz.  Keep an eye on what they’re saying – for them, the talks will be issue #1 this week and will no doubt maintain lively commentary.  They were the bell-weather for Netanyahu’s trip to DC in July, and the Israeli English-language press deemed that trip a success, which became the de facto public narrative.

Photo credit: Templar 1307′s photo stream

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Posted in A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Issues | 1 Comment »

The Dangers of the Beck-on Call

Monday, August 30th, 2010
Lee Drutman


Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Lee Drutman

Among the literature I picked up on Saturday while attending the “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall (purely to indulge my curiosity) was a three-by-five card asking me: “ARE YOU READY TO BEGIN THE REBIRTH OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION?” The card directs me to a website, the1789project.com, where I can pledge money to a PAC that will only support candidates who adhere to the Constitution.

Another card tells me: “Politicians are destroying our country. We have the solution. Join us. We seek the modern day incarnations of Madison, Franklin, and Jefferson.” The card is for the “Get Out of Our House” project, or GOOOH. The plan, according to the website, is “to remove all members of the U.S. House of Representatives and replace them with everyday Americans just like you.” Wow. Just like me? I can only dream.

I was struck by the ways in which this resonated with the larger theme of the program: Restoring Honor. Restoring. This great hope that only if we could get back to some golden era, if only we could tap into this apparently forsaken “Constitution” document, if only we could get rid of all the “career politicians” and replace them with ordinary citizens, somehow all the problems of the world would solve themselves.

It’s a wonderfully alluring biblical narrative: the return to the lost Eden. One gentleman I spoke with assured me that if only we all would just stop and really read the Bible and take its teachings to heart, all of our problems would be solved. There would be no need for government. Everything would work perfectly. (He was handing out literature for “Project Restore”). Meanwhile, Glenn Beck announced over the loudspeakers: “To Restore America, we must restore ourselves.”

The idea of redemption through a return to first principles is nothing new, and it’s far from the exclusive province of the political right. One is reminded, for example, of the hopeful Port Huron statement, with its great emphasis on a return to participatory democracy driven by a return to values, and its explicit narrative of decline: “Theoretic chaos has replaced the idealistic thinking of old — and, unable to reconstitute theoretic order, men have condemned idealism itself. Doubt has replaced hopefulness — and men act out a defeatism that is labeled realistic.” Compare that to Glenn Beck: “My role, as I see it, is to wake America up to the backsliding of principles and values.”

Sure, I’m all for self-improvement. We could all be kinder, gentler, harder working, better people. But the very fact that self-improvement is a $10 billion a year industry (and growing) is a testament to the human condition never quite being able to live up to our ideals. “If men were angels,” wrote Madison in Federalist #51, “no government would be necessary.”

The flaw in the redemption-by-return-to-first-principles story is that there never was a golden age. Each era had its strengths and weaknesses, but we tend to remember the wisest statements because those are the ones that are passed on and consecrated. (And lest we forget: The America of 1789 was an isolated agrarian nation in which only rich, educated, white property owners could vote. Would we want go back, even if we could?)

The mild danger in the redemption-by-return-to-first-principles story is that it undermines the ability of political institutions to solve problems through the messy art of compromise. If the only acceptable solution to the mess we’re in is to start fresh (for example, to replace to whole stinkin’ lot of lawmakers with “ordinary citizens”), it won’t be long before that fresh start encounters the same timeless governance problem of aggregating diverse preferences, and start acting like “politicians.” The more serious danger is that the redemption-by-rededication is a kindred spirit of utopian thinking that slides easily into ends-justifies-the-means murder and genocide, from communist purges to terrorist jihads.

The current sputtering economy, or the toxic brew of declining revenues and spiraling debt and entitlement obligations, or climate change, or any of the hard problems we face as a society — these are not going to go away if only we learn to love thy neighbor. The only way they’ll go away is with patience and compromise and hard work. This is the world in which we live. We need to roll up our sleeves and be realistic.

Yes, we can all be better people. I’m trying every day. But a full and complete purge of sin as gateway to a lost Eden is not a substitute for the real challenges of politics. Politics, whatever its shortcomings, is the art of the possible. The return to a lost golden age is the art of the impossible.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore’s photostream

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Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues | 2 Comments »

P-Fix Highlights of the Week

Friday, August 27th, 2010
Lee Drutman


Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Lee Drutman

Some of the week’s best reads from Progressive Fix:

Scott Thomasson: Beware of Tax Zombies … “There comes a point when the zeal for progressivity can overtake reasonable concerns about encouraging economic growth, and this year is not the time to let that happen.  Questions of distributional justice are important, and the Bush tax cuts did a lot to worsen inequality in our country that need to be remedied, but let’s keep the bigger picture in mind here.”

Lee Drutman: Is the Partisan Majority Dead? … “One wonders: have we entered a new era in which it is impossible for the majority of any modern nation to come together behind one banner? Is the modern partisan majority dead? And if so, what do we do about it?”

Will Marshall: Combating Al Qaeda as Franchise … “Our government also needs an explicit strategy for shoring up failing or fragile states that are particularly vulnerable to extremist violence. It’s no accident that al Qaeda and its offshoots flourish in ungoverned spaces within countries like Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Jim Arkedis: Zardari Plays the Terrorism Card … “Zardari made a calculated pitch framed in stark terms:  help us or the terrorists win. The thing is, he might just have a point.  The flood might not be the radical’s ideal hope, but there is certainly an opportunity to further divide Pakistani’s allegiances.”

Nathan Richardson: The McClellan Principle … “At its core, the argument claims that any uncertainty about climate change means we should either give up, or at least wait indefinitely for better evidence. I call it the “McClellan principle.” Like the Civil War general, proponents of the argument counsel doing nothing until absolutely certain of success.”

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Evening Fix

Friday, August 27th, 2010
Lee Drutman


Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Lee Drutman

Our top five reads of the day:

  • Susan Jacoby uses the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali to urge liberals to think more carefully about their sometimes unquestioning faith in multiculturalism: “I find myself in a lonely place in relation to many liberals, political and religious, because I cannot accept a multiculturalism that tends to excuse, under the rubric of “tolerance,” religious and cultural practices that violate universal human rights.
  • Tom Friedman reviews “Waiting for Superman” and praises the hard work of serious education reformers who aren’t waiting for superman: “We know what works, and it’s not a miracle cure. It is the whatever-it-takes-tenacity of the Geoffrey Canadas; it is the no-excuses-seriousness of the KIPP school (Knowledge is Power Program) founders; it is the lead-follow-or-get-out-of-the-way ferocity of the Washington and New York City school chancellors, Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein.”
  • Mohamed A. El-Erian argues that additional stimulus is pointless because current recession is not cyclical – it’s structural: “What is critical to keep in mind is that this situation is part of a broad, multiyear process driven by national and global realignments. It’s a secular phenomenon that needs to be better understood and navigated — by recognizing its structural dimensions and by urgently broadening the excessively cyclical policy mindsets that abound.”
  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory finds some good news on national energy consumption: “The significant decrease in coal used to produce electricity can be attributed to three factors: overall lower electricity demand, a fuel shift to natural gas, and an offset created by more wind power production.”
  • Paul Kedrosky makes a pretty word cloud summarizing Ben Bernanke’s Jackson Hole speech: “Just because I know most of you can’t bear the thought of reading Ben Bernanke’s entire speech today in Jackson Hole, here is the word cloud version. It’s just as opaque, but much nicer colors.”

Posted in Daily Fix, Evening Fix | No Comments »

A Better Way to Prosecute Terror Suspects

Friday, August 27th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

The White House today withdrew charges against Abd-Al Rahim al-Nashiri, the al Qaeda operative who lead the attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbor, Yemen in October 2000, and was awaiting trial in a reformed military commission in Guantanamo Bay.

Reasons for the withdrawal remain unclear, but one possibility is that the Obama administration is not comfortable with how rules for the new military tribunal system are being implemented.

As background, on the campaign trail in 2008, then-Senator Obama campaigned against the Bush version of military tribunals.  In office, the president endorsed the 2009 Military Commissions Act, which reformed Bush’s military tribunals by letting, say, the defendant actually cross-examine witnesses and call witnesses in their defense.  (You can read details of the 2009 law, and how it improves Bush’s 2006 iteration, here.)

Any discomfort from the White House may stem from another dropped case this year against a Guantanamo detainee. In May, the Administration scuttled charges against Omar Khadr, a Canadian, when it became uncomfortable with  interpretation of certain legal definitions in the 2009 Act.  Based on the Khadr precedent, one Administration estimate believed up to one-third of the Guantanamo proceedings might be canned on similar grounds.

We’ve been operating in this legal limbo for nearly ten years:  the system for prosecuting terrorism suspects is an ad hoc, inefficient mish-mash of stop-gap solutions.

But there are better solutions. One is “National Security Court,” along the lines of what the – gasp – French have.  Harvey Rishikof made a strong argument for this in PPI’s Memos to the New President:

As a practical matter, however, it will be difficult for you to close Gitmo without an appropriate legal framework for adjudicating terrorism cases.

Such a framework is urgently needed. …

In the French system, an investigating judge is essentially a special prosecutor in charge of a secret, grand jury-like inquiry through which he can file charges, order wiretaps, and issue  warrants and subpoenas. These judges can request the assistance of the police and intelligence  services; order the preventive detention of suspects for six days without charge; and justify  keeping someone behind bars for several years pending an investigation. The judges have  international jurisdiction when a French national is involved in a terrorist act, be it as a perpetrator or as a victim.

Clearly, this is by no means an ideal to be adopted wholesale by the American justice system.  Several of the French magistrates’ powers would run far afoul of proper constitutional safeguards in the United States. It is worth noting, however, at least one benefit of the French  system that we could readily emulate: It has produced a pool of specialized judges and investigators adept at prosecuting terrorist networks.

Of the Bush administration’s many failings in the so-called GWOT, perhaps its greatest is that it never defined the rules of the road to prosecute those who had harmed us.  A National Security Court would right that wrong.

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Posted in A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Issues | 1 Comment »

Late August Primary Drama

Friday, August 27th, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

Tuesday’s five-state primary/runoff extravaganza produced plenty of drama, several close races, and a few surprises — especially in Alaska’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, where former judge Joe Miller, endorsed by Sarah Palin and fueled by the Tea Party Express, ran slightly ahead of incumbent Lisa Murkowski despite being heavily outspent.

With absentee and provisional ballots still pending, Miller leads by 1668 votes. His campaign appears to have benefitted a great deal from turnout patterns affected by an anti-abortion ballot initiative.  If she ultimately loses the GOP nomination, Murkowski could possibly run as the candidate of the Libertarian Party, giving Democrat Scott McAdams a chance.

In a less dramatic outcome, in Arizona, John McCain easily brushed off J.D. Hayworth’s once-fearsome challenge, and Gov. Jan Brewer (R) won with little trouble. GOP House primaries in AZ were a bit more turbulent.  In AZ-3, Ben Quayle, son of yes-that-Quayle, overcame involvement in an off-color internet site to win an open seat nomination over a crowded field.  In AZ-8, represented by Democrat Gabby Giffords, the GOP primary was won by Tea Party favorite Jesse Kelly over front-runner Jonathan Paton in a mild upset.

In Oklahoma, two Republican congressional runoffs were held.  In OK-2, veterinarian Charles Thompson won a low-profile primary to face Blue Dog Democrat Dan Boren. The national GOP will now decide whether to give Thompson a lift by making this a targeted race.  In OK-5, church camp director James Lankford won a surprisingly large win over Club for Growth candidate Kevin Calvey (who appears to have gone too negative) for an open Republican seat.

In Vermont, the Democratic gubernatorial contest seems to be ending as it began: close and civil.  Final but unofficial returns showed state senate president pro tem Peter Shumlin edging former Lt. Gov. Doug Racine and Secretary of State Deb Markowitz for the right to take on Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie (R).  There’s a chance of a recount, but the candidates have already had a unity rally.

There wasn’t much civility down in Florida, however, where the Republican gubernatorial primary was won by wealthy “conservative outsider” Rick Scott, who will carry his extensive baggage into a three-way general election battle with Democrat Alex Sink and independent Bud Chiles.

Scott’s bitterly disappointed opponent, Attorney General Bill McCollum, has suggested he might endorse Sink.  Meanwhile, Scott’s Democratic doppelganger, billionaire investor Jeff Greene, did not do so well in the Senate primary; congressman Kendrick Meek beat him easily.  (Over at pollster.com, Mark Blumenthal has a good analysis of the challenges Meek will face in the general election).

In highly competitive FL House primaries, 2nd district Blue Dog Alan Boyd narrowly turned back a surprisingly strong challenge from state senate minority leader Al Lawson.  8th district Democrat Alan Grayson, who’s painted a bullseye on his own back with chronic conservative-baiting comments, will face former state senator majority leader Daniel Webster (R).  And another vulnerable Democrat, 24th district congresswoman Susan Kosmas, will face state legislator Sandy Adams, who won a fractious primary dominated by fights between Karen Diebel and Craig Miller.

On Saturday, Louisiana will hold its congressional primary, with three Republicans battling for the 3rd district nomination, an open seat being vacated by Democrat Charlie Melancon, who is running for the Senate.  In the 2nd district, four Democrats are fighting for the chance to take on one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents in the House, Joseph Cao.

Meanwhile, also on Saturday, West Virginia is holding its special Senate primary, with Gov. Joe Manchin sure to win the Democratic nod in this sleepy contest, and the late Robert Byrd’s 2008 opponent, John Raese, likely to win the Republican nomination.

We’ll then have a brief break in the primary calendar until September 14, when no less than seven states, plus the District of Columbia, hold their nominating contests.

Photo Credit: hlkljgk‘s Photostream

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Posted in Daily Fix, Political Memo | 1 Comment »

Beware of Partisan Tax Zombies

Friday, August 27th, 2010
Scott Thomasson


Scott Thomasson is the economic and domestic policy director for the Progressive Policy Institute. Follow @st_ppi

by Scott Thomasson

There has been growing chatter this week in response to James Surowiecki’s recent piece in The New Yorker suggesting we create a new, higher-rate tax bracket for the “super rich.”  It’s the kind of side story I should expect to see and not take too seriously when major tax changes are on the political agenda.  But I can’t just ignore this one, because it keeps getting more traction, and I think it baits extremists on both sides into all-too-familiar class warfare arguments, which are exactly the kind of discussions we should not be having right now.

As a Democrat, I am strongly in favor of a progressive tax system.  It’s one of the widely held values that defines us as a party, and it’s something we should not shrink from fighting for.  But there comes a point when the zeal for progressivity can overtake reasonable concerns about encouraging economic growth, and this year is not the time to let that happen.  Questions of distributional justice are important, and the Bush tax cuts did a lot to worsen inequality in our country that need to be remedied, but let’s keep the bigger picture in mind here.

The proposed “super rich” bracket is a supercharged example of how progressives are misdirecting our energies in the tax debate.  While there’s not much chance that it will make the jump to becoming an actual legislative proposal, the idea has struck a nerve on the left, which is already twitchy over the debate over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts for the top tax brackets, as Paul Krugman dutifully showed in his Times op-ed on Monday.   CNBC was quick to give the story more legs by bringing on Michael Linden from the Center for American Progress to endorse the idea in a segment on Monday.  Then they came back to it with another segment Wednesday night with Matt Miller (also from CAP) facing off with Stephen Moore from the Wall Street Journal.

For someone who has written about the Tyranny of Dead Ideas, Miller really let himself go a little zombie on this one, sounding too much like the “talking dead” with the old-school liberal argument for steep progressivity in the tax code and a deaf ear to the concerns about economic growth.  I’m not criticizing him personally as much I am CNBC for painting him that way, since Miller has repeatedly weighed in with very good thoughts about cuts for payroll and corporate taxes, but I think volunteering to step into the scripted left-wing role for this segment was a step backward from his earlier calls for a more radical centrism.

Is this really the kind of debate we are going to get dragged into this year?  With the country still languishing in recession, people in every tax bracket are looking to Washington to do what needs to be done to get the economy going again.  Do we really have to listen to the same broken records from both sides this time around (and they really are records, because these arguments haven’t changed much since the days of vinyl)?    This is the type of discussion that will drag the current tax debate into a predictable and unproductive battle of liberal and conservative clichés, which all but ensures that Congress will spend the fall in a tug-of-war over marginal tweaks to the Bush tax cuts and ignore other proposals for reform and stimulus.

We Democrats should not paint themselves into our usual corner in the tax debate by limiting our ideas to line-drawing, whether it’s the Administration’s line for the richest two percent or a new line for the “Ultrarich” in the top 0.1 percent.  Letting this happen would be a mistake for two reasons:

First, it obscures and marginalizes better policy questions at a time when sustainable economic growth should be our top priority.  Putting aside broader reform proposals, even the Bush tax cuts may not deserve to be lumped together and simply cleaved in two at the $250,000 line.  For example, rates on dividend income for the top brackets could jump from 15% to 39% in 2011, while capital gains income will stay at a lower 20% rate.  There is a good case to be made that the dividend rate should be kept in line with the capital gains rate, regardless of what happens to marginal rates, because having a disparity between these two taxes on investment negatively affects the cost of capital for utilities and other companies paying high dividends, which discourages spending on new capital and infrastructure.  But we likely won’t have that debate, because the distributional effects of playing with the dividend rate fall mostly within the top brackets, so they are on the wrong side of the dividing line Obama has drawn.

Second, Republicans usually do a much better job delivering their zombie rhetoric than Democrats.  As John Boehner so frequently demonstrates, the Republican response for talking about the top brackets is to use “small business” as a euphemism for rich people.  They have shaky new statistics every week about how the Democrats are raising taxes on small business.  But trying to explain away all the false numbers tends to put Democrats on the defensive, when they should be making an affirmative case for promoting economic growth.   And so far, Boehner and company are getting away with doing just that, because the President and congressional leaders are following our party’s tradition of being reactive on taxes instead of laying out a real vision.  So right now the public thinks the “Democrats’ plan” is pretty much whatever John Boehner and the tax zombies say it is.

Progressives’ top priority right now needs to be reviving economic growth and broad-based prosperity.  We can’t have a meaningful debate about economic inequality until we get our economy growing again.  Jobs and growth—not punishing the rich—are what Americans are interested in, and what we should be talking about.  Instead, progressives are limiting their talking points to justifying the dividing line between those who deserve tax cuts and those who don’t—the helps and the help-nots—and we’re letting Republicans own the growth side of the debate.

Democrats need to have something more than tired old thinking that says the Bush tax cuts are mostly OK for now, as long as we give them a quick liberal haircut—just a little off the top.  Instead of trying to repackage Bush’s mistakes, we should be framing the debate around the pro-growth virtues of a free-standing package of “Obama tax cuts.”  All we need now is for Obama to actually propose one.  I hope the zombies didn’t get to him too.

Photo credit: JamesCalder’s photostream

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Posted in A New Framework for Growth and Equity, Daily Fix, Issues | 3 Comments »

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