One of Barack Obama’s finest moments as President came this past September, when he gave a speech to Congress urging passage of the health-care reform bill. In his closing remarks, he invoked the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, and what Kennedy had written him in his final days: “What we face is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.” Those words resonated with Obama. “I’ve thought about that phrase quite a bit in recent days – the character of our country,” he told the country that night.

Those same words stung with relevance this weekend. Overshadowed by the landmark repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, a triumph of social justice, was a cruel development: the Senate’s failure to break the filibuster to pass the DREAM Act.

The current debate over the tax-cut compromise hammered out by President Obama and Republicans in Congress raises the obvious question: If the bill passes (and that’s certainly not a sure bet at this point, as left and right harden their positions), what will happen in 2012?

Brookings Institution congressional scholar Thomas Mann is hardly known as a partisan bomb-thrower. A frequent co-author of books and articles on Congress and American politics with the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein, Mann is a model of sober and intelligent commentary, calling things as he sees them.

That reputation makes his recent comments on the state of our politics particularly noteworthy. In an interview with Time’s Jay Newton-Small, here’s what Mann had to say:

There is simply no basis for meaningful bipartisan leadership meetings today. Republicans are determined to defeat Obama in 2012; they have no interest in negotiating with him in order to provide him any sort of victory. This is a partisan war and the Republicans are playing to win. The only question is how long it will take Obama to accept this reality and act accordingly.

‘Tis the season for deficit commissions. The past week has brought not one, not two, but three stabs at solving America’s looming fiscal crisis. And just yesterday, the Brookings Institution hosted a panel discussion on “The Politics of Entitlement Reform and the Budget Deficit,” featuring a murderers’ row of budget experts across the ideological spectrum. All the activity underscores just how much concerns about the deficit have taken over the Washington conversation.

But will all that hand-wringing lead to anything concrete and enduring? I have my doubts. The substantive merits and faults of the plans aside, what’s striking is, frankly, how unlikely any action seems to be.

The smoke has cleared; only the maimed and the dead remain on the battlefield. They are, for the most part, Democrats. The job of carting them off will take weeks; the post-mortems will take even longer. And yet progressives — we with our fetish for soul-searching — should reject a new, indulgent round of autocritique, or at least recognize that there is only so much to reflect on. The electorate’s rejection of Democrats is a lot of things, but a referendum on the quality of our ideas it isn’t.

How can that be? Isn’t a rebuke of this magnitude by definition a rejection of a party’s ideas? Well, it is if the ideas were carefully inspected and considered by an informed electorate. But sobriety has been hard to come by this election season. And what we tend to forget is that, before our discourse got sucked into the Fox-powered Tea Party vortex, our ideas were actually popular across the spectrum. Far from dogmatic and divisive, the policies that progressives have pushed in recent years have been sane, sensible fixes that have drawn support from left, right, and center.

• “On Immigration, Obama Ready to Lead — But Will the Public Follow?” Will Marshall

It’s puzzling that President Obama keeps returning to the combustible subject of immigration. You’d think that, with big financial reform and energy/climate bills hanging fire, he’d have his hands full. And with unemployment stuck at nearly 10 percent, it’s not exactly a propitious time for a national debate over legalizing millions of immigrants who are living and working illegally in this country. Read more…

• “A Nation of Pilot Projects?” Mike Signer

The ambitions are noble and the rhetoric stirring, but the question is whether we really are shaping a future here—or just a set of ambitious but singular pilot projects. Read more…

• “The State of the States: A Look at the Governors’ Races,” Ed Kilgore

Having looked at the overall landscape of House and Senate elections recently, it’s probably time for another overview of gubernatorial contests, which will have a bearing not only on state policies but on the upcoming decennial round of redistricting. Read more…

• “Terrorism, Material Support and the First Amendment,” Matthew Dahl

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court sided with the government saying that the statute did not unconstitutionally impinge on the plaintiffs’ right to free speech. The crux of the Court’s 36-page opinion is this: The nature of the acts of terrorist organizations is so nefarious that support in any form, even when the support goes towards legal activities, is an illegal act that Congress can constitutionally regulate. Read more…

• “Death of Cap-and-Trade?” Nathan Richardson

Since the transport rule would replace both of the major cap-and-trade programs currently in operation in the U.S., this would mean an end to interstate emissions trading, at least for the 31 states affected by the new rule. It’s only a slight overstatement to say that cap-and-trade as we now know it would end. Read more…

Enjoy the holiday weekend. Regular blogging will resume on Tuesday.

Some of the day’s best reads:

• Stephen Rose argues that the economy is, in fact, getting better: “Each week over the last year, a number of positive and negative economic indicators were announced. From my vantage point, the positive signs (‘green shoots’) have been more numerous. Where others saw premonitions of a double-dip recession, I saw the slow revival of the economy.”
• Tim Kane of Growthology doesn’t share Rose’s optimism: “Though I’m not in the Krugman camp for policy reasons, I concur with his macro pessimism. I still haven’t gotten the memo that the recovery has arrived.”
• Robert Litan testifies before the U.S. Joint Economic Committee on the importance of federally funded research in spawning innovation: “If the economy is all about ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ then we must rely on a new generation of entrepreneurs to commercialize the innovations of the future and in the process bring back the roughly 8 million jobs that have been lost in this recession.”
• Matt Miller wants reformers to take on banker compensation: “The way pay is rigged at publicly owned Wall Street firms creates incentives for casino-style gambling, because bankers reap all the upside and stick shareholders or taxpayers with the losses. When their big bets go bad, in other words, top bankers walk away rich anyway. This is not how capitalism is supposed to work.”
• Third Way released a new policy memo on confronting terrorism.

Some of the day’s best reads:

• William Galston files a dispatch from Jerusalem: “I visit Israel at least once a year, so I have an opportunity to observe changes in the country’s concerns. Never before have I sensed such a mood of foreboding, which has been triggered by two issues above all — the looming impasse in relations with the United States and a possible military confrontation with Iran.”
• Joel Kotkin looks at the changing demographics of America: “The America of 2050 will most likely remain the one truly transcendent superpower in terms of society, technology and culture. It will rely on what has been called America’s ‘civil religion’ — its ability to forge a unique common national culture amid great diversity of people and place.”
• Ron Brownstein analyzes the public mood leading up to the fall elections: “So far, public hostility to government is shaping the midterm election far more than alienation from business. “
• Peter Beinart considers the president’s winning streak: “I know this is supposed to be Barack Obama’s summer of discontent. The oil spill is still gushing; the economy is still floundering; the Afghan war is deteriorating; Americans don’t find him so charming anymore. But have you noticed that when it comes to actual policy, he keeps racking up the wins?”
• Yale Environment 360 has a report on the increasing importance of natural gas to our energy future.

Bruce Bartlett has a column up in today’s Fiscal Times that drills home just how far the Republican Party has veered from the center over the last few years. Bartlett recounts the story of the 1990 budget deal, which saw President George H.W. Bush reach across the aisle and strike a compromise with Democrats in an effort to shrink the deficit. The compromise on Bush’s end is, of course, now legendary: a violation of his “read my lips” pledge during the 1988 campaign that there would be no new taxes.

Today’s big personnel news is Peter Orszag’s decision to leave the White House budget office sometime in the next few weeks. The departure, which has already sparked speculation on possible replacements, will be the Obama administration’s first major exit. Whoever the White House picks to replace him will have big shoes to fill.

Some of the day’s best reads:

• ITT Corp. President Steve Loranger sees a model for infrastructure financing in his own company’s efforts to remake the air traffic control system: “To address this challenge, ITT is investing more than $200 million of its own capital to help make modernized air traffic a reality in this country. In exchange for that investment, the FAA has granted ITT the rights to manage the NextGen program’s ADS-B ground infrastructure during the next 10 years.”
• David Roberts looks at the merits of a utility-only cap-and-trade bill: “At this point, however, the question may no longer be whether a comprehensive bill is preferable to a utility-only bill, but whether a utility-only bill is preferable to the energy-only bill the Senate seems bent on passing. Judged against that somewhat pathetic baseline, it is, in fact, preferable.”
• Peter Beinart quashes a rumor making the rounds on the right: a Hillary Clinton primary challenge in 2012: “The claim that Hillary will challenge Obama in 2012 is a lot like the claim that George W. Bush would dump Dick Cheney in 2004. In both cases, what seemed like dispassionate analysis was actually wishful thinking.”
• David Jackson takes a look at James McCommons’ Waiting on a Train, a new book about the state of passenger rail in the U.S.: “What’s truly illuminating are his interviews with executives from CSX and BNSF on their views of passenger rail and his exposition of how Federal Railroad Administration regulations slow down the quasi-high speed Acela Northeast Corridor service.”
• CBPP lays out what young adults stand to gain when health care reform legislation goes into effect.

In a piece published this Sunday, Edmund L. Andrews and Eric Pianin serve up a profile in Fiscal Times of an odd couple who will be crucial to the effort to restore fiscal sanity to the country.

On one side is Andy Stern, labor firebrand and former head of the Service Employees International Union, the nation’s fastest-growing union. On the other is David Cote, chairman and CEO of Honeywell, a global technology firm. Both are members of President Obama’s deficit commission tasked with issuing recommendations to address the nation’s fiscal crisis. Both consider themselves pragmatists who believe they can bridge the partisan gap and help engineer lasting solutions to our budget problems.

Some of the day’s best reads:

• Leslie Gelb reviews Peter Beinart’s new book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris: “His thesis is not new, but it is indefatigably rendered: America’s shortcomings flow entirely from hubris or overconfidence, much as the mythical Icarus perished because he flew too near the sun.”
• John Avlon looks at the brewing civil war in the Democratic Party: “We’re all familiar with the factional fights among Republicans, the party purges, and rabid RINO (a.k.a. Republican in Name Only) hunting. What’s gotten far less attention is the still emerging ideological blood-sport of DINO hunting—but it’s a fever that’s catching among the activist class.”
• Michael A. Cohen wonders why the left has been silent on Afghanistan: “[T]he lack of good alternatives for Afghanistan seems to be a major stumbling block for progressives. Many told me that it was difficult to criticize the president’s strategy without a clear sense of what should be done differently.”
• Joe Klein isn’t impressed with Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) prescription for Iran: “McCain, blustery as ever, wants regime change. Amen to that. But his vague, neocolonial sense that (a) we can help bring that about and (b) that the Iranian people want us to bring it about, is debatable, to say the very least.”
• David Paul Kuhn looks at how 2012 is shaping up for President Obama: “No significant jobs recovery by 2012, Obama looks like Jimmy Carter. With recovery, Obama looks like Ronald Reagan.”

Some of the day’s best reads:

• Dana Milbank wonders about the kind of campaign that his old college editor, Andrew Romanoff, is running in Colorado: “That’s why I’m troubled by what my old editor is doing in Colorado. Americans are disgusted enough with politics. Is it really necessary to portray one of the good guys as a crook?”
• Matt Bai has a long piece in the Times Sunday Magazine on Obama, the Dems and the midterms: “It’s not clear that Obama can translate his appeal among disaffected voters into support for a party and its aging Washington establishment. Nor is it clear, as he looks ahead to 2012, how hard he’s going to try.”
• ITIF released a new study on H-1B visa workers: “[A] key component of a robust national innovation and competitiveness policy needs to include a more liberal approach to high skill immigration so that America can attract and retain the world’s best and brightest.”
• William Galston doesn’t think the U.S. is too big to fail: “In plain English: the higher spending and public debt go, the stronger the economic case for fiscal restraint. At some point, serious deficit reduction ceases to be a green eye-shade exercise and becomes essential for sustainable economic growth.”
• The Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship blog has a dispatch from this week’s science and tech innovation forum at Brookings.

“At this point, there are no good solutions — only a choice among painful and distasteful ones.”

Steven Pearlstein’s words in today’s Post make for a glum start to the day, but there’s no better time than the morning to ring the alarm. And when it comes to our economy, you can’t sound the warnings often enough.

Pearlstein notes the infuriating lack of consensus among experts about our economic predicament. Do we spend more stimulus, or start cutting back on spending? Do we worry about deflation or inflation? Do we encourage more consumer spending to speed up the recovery, or should we orient our economy toward more saving and sustainable growth?

Some of the day’s best reads:

• Charles Mahtesian identifies a theme in yesterday’s primaries: “The political center — and the conventional politicians that gravitate there — showed some enduring power.”
• David Brooks writes about the eroding power of teachers’ unions: “It used to be that a few policy wonks would write essays assailing union rules that protected mediocre teachers; these pronouncements were greeted with skepticism in the media and produced no political movement. Now powerful political players, most notably President Obama, are making such arguments.”
• Michael Greenstone thinks we should raise or do away with liability limits on oil companies: “[T]he $75 million cap on liabilities for economic damages means that oil companies do not bear full responsibility for oil spills. This misalignment of incentives is a classic case of moral hazard.”
• Doug Kendall and Jim Ryan have some advice for Elena Kagan: “Kagan would be doing the entire nation as well as the Constitution itself a service if she would use the confirmation process to express and explain her commitment to follow the Constitution — all of it.”
• CNAS has its fourth annual conference tomorrow.

Paul Berman may be our most romantic public intellectual. His prose, febrile and epigrammatic, can be intoxicatingly lyrical. He doesn’t so much make arguments as launch crusades. He is a careful scholar, building his cases with close reading and creative exegesis, but the cool erudition barely conceals the hot idealism. “Let us be for the freedom of others,” read the last line of Terror and Liberalism, his most widely read book. Details, word choices and footnotes matter, but it is the sweeping idea that animates his work.

It’s fitting that the cover design for his latest book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, features a Minimalist array of lines, black and white. For those are the terms in which Berman thinks. It’s what makes the arrival of each new Berman book an event – you expect lines to be drawn, challenges issued. It’s also what can get him in trouble.

Some of the day’s best reads:

• Michael Levi thinks Obama should hire more oilmen: “Even if the United States were to (wisely) adopt an ambitious policy that dramatically lowered U.S. dependence on oil, we’d still be consuming a lot of oil for quite a while. Given that reality, it would seem wise to have some people around who understand the guts of how the oil world works.”
• Dan Balz takes a look at California’s solution to its partisan problems: “Proposition 14 calls for the elimination of the party primaries that now select candidates for the general election….The top two finishers, regardless of party, would advance to the November general election.”
• The New York Times has a profile of Mickey Kaus, currently running for the California Senate Democratic nomination: “Here are Mickey Kaus’ issues, in a nutshell: labor unions (which he blames for the destruction of the California educational system, the auto industry and assorted government institutions) and illegal immigration (which he thinks can’t be solved with a general amnesty).”
• Politico has a story on the growing political backlash against labor unions: “Republican and some Democratic leaders are focusing with increasing intensity on public workers and the unions that represent them, casting them as overpaid obstacles to good government and demanding cuts in their often-generous benefits.”
• Public Impact has a new report on teacher quality.

Some of the day’s best reads:

• Maya MacGuineas asks if we can afford a $100 billion jobs bill: “We cannot afford to add more to the national credit card — an irresponsible approach to budgeting that will weaken the economy over time and do nothing in the effort to create sustainable job growth.”
• Dan Balz takes a look at the White House’s troubles: “At virtually every turn lately, the White House cannot shake the appearance that it is hamstrung and a step behind.”
• Ron Brownstein writes about China’s “energy paradox”: “China’s energy demands are growing so fast that despite this ambitious clean-energy push, the country is still projected to double its consumption of coal by 2030. That could doom hopes of effectively combating climate change.”
• Mike Mandel finds an interesting tidbit in today’s job numbers: “Compared to a year ago, the labor market for foreign-born workers appears to have improved. Meanwhile, the labor market for native-born workers appears to have worsened compared to a year ago.”
• William Galston discusses compulsory voting on NPR.