Posts Tagged ‘ Barack Obama ’

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Obama’s Iraq Speech Splits the Right

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Jim Arkedis


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

by Jim Arkedis

To thank or not to thank?

Yesterday morning, that’s what we were wondering around the PPI offices — would Obama thank President Bush during his Iraq address that night?  I had a conversation with my colleague Lindsay Lewis, who had just heard White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs mention that Obama was scheduled to call Bush that afternoon.  Might Obama directly thank Bush for adopting “the surge”, which, as the incomplete political narrative goes, was responsible for the decrease in violence in Iraq in 2007?

If he was explicit in his praise, I felt that the left would be apoplectic.  DailyKos and HuffPo headlines would read “The Jerk THANKED Bush”, not “Obama Fulfills Campaign Pledge.”  As polls indicate Democrats’ looming losses this November, that’s not what the administration wants floating around its mysteriously disenchanted base.

Lindsay, ever the astute politico, noted that by paying tribute to Bush, Obama was playing long-ball:  If he were to thank Bush, Obama would be positioning himself as a post-partisan Commander-In-Chief.  In political terms, he’d be positioning himself for the reelect.

Turns out that Lindsay wasn’t far off, and Obama even did him one-better: The president threaded a very fine needle that mollified critics on left and right:

This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush.  It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset.  Yet no one can doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.  As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it.  And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis’ future.

Turns out he didn’t go so far as to thank Bush, which keeps the focus on fulfilling his campaign pledge for the progressive base, but he succeeded in praising Bush enough to mute conservative critique and position himself as a post-partisan leader.  If you’ll pardon the phrase, Mission: Accomplished.

The conservative intelligensia are split.  Here Max Boot sounding… magnanimous, even:

I thought that this speech was about as good as we could expect from an opponent of the Iraq war — and better than Obama has done in the past. He even (for the first time?) held out an olive branch to his predecessor. … There was only a brief mention of Afghanistan, but what he said was pretty good.

Here’s Bill Kristol, sharing the love:

I thought his speech was on the whole commendable, and even at times impressive. … Not a bad tribute to the troops, and not a bad statement of the importance and indispensability of hard power. And, on the whole, not a bad speech by the president.

Truth be told, I’m happy to see them giving credit where credit is due.

Of course, every conservative didn’t feel so gooey inside.  Here’s Jennifer Rubin:

Obama is still candidate Obama, never tiring of reminding us that he kept his campaign pledge and ever eager to push aside foreign policy challenges so he can get on with the business of remaking America. All in all, it was what we were promised it would not be — self-serving, disingenuous, ungracious, and unreassuring.

And Jonah Goldberg:

I really disliked it…. If you read this closely, what Obama is saying is that not only do we owe it to the troops to rally around his discredited and partisan economic agenda (“It’s our turn”), not only is it a test of our patriotism to sign on with his environmental and industrial planning schemes, but that doing so “must be our central mission as a people.” I find everything about that offensive.

The point is that on some level, Obama succeeded in presenting himself as a post-partisan Commander-in-Chief.  Of course, anyone can concoct a reason why not to like a speech given by the president of a different political persuasion.  So while Rubin and Goldberg’s reactions are stock and trade, drawing even faint praise from the likes of Bill Kristol is a remarkable and welcome milestone.

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An Iraq Milestone?

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

Many commentators seem puzzled over President Obama’s decision to use an Oval Office speech to mark the “end of combat operations” in Iraq. The reason: Iraq is important to Barack Obama, even if most Americans are nowadays preoccupied with a foundering economy.

Iraq, in fact, may be the reason Obama is President. During the 2008 campaign, the very green Junior Senator from Illinois used his opposition to the war to distinguish himself from more experienced rivals like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. His anti-war credentials allowed him to ride the powerful tide of anti-Bush sentiment among progressives. It also buttressed his claims to be a Washington outsider, the most authentic agent of political change in the race. This appealed to independents.

So it’s little wonder that Obama takes his pledge to end the Iraq war very seriously. He undoubtedly regards it as a matter of keeping faith with his core supporters. At the same time, he was careful not to inflame old passions over the war. On the contrary, he rightly praised U.S. troops for their skill and valor, offered a graceful salute to his predecessor, and urged the country to move on.

In this respect, the speech was probably the most genuinely “post partisan” of his presidency. But it also raised questions about what Obama really thinks about the war.  He noted that U.S. troops, at tremendous sacrifice, toppled one of the world’s worst tyrants and gave Iraq a chance to embrace “a different destiny.” Does that mean he disagrees with the New York Times’ characterization of Iraq as a “tragic, pointless war”? Obama sounded ambiguous on the question of whether it was all worth it, but such reticence probably comes with the job of being President.

Whether the public will regard his declaration as an important milestone is another matter. Violence in Iraq is already down, thanks at least in part to the surge that Obama initially opposed but has since implicitly endorsed by putting the same general, David Petraeus, in charge of a similar escalation in Afghanistan. What’s more, 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq for the next 16 months, and at least some of them will be fighting al Qaeda insurgents. Truth to tell, the President did little more last night that endorse the timetable set forth in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) the Bush administration negotiated with the Iraqi government.

For Obama, the significance of this moment is that it marks the transition to Iraqi responsibility for security. That’s fine, but America can’t simply wash its hands and walk away at the end of next year. Iraq didn’t ask to be invaded, or to be plunged into the hellish sectarian violence that followed. The United States has incurred an unavoidable moral obligation to help a decent political order emerge in Iraq. If that requires revisiting the SOFA, the administration shouldn’t be inflexible on the point.

In stressing the limits of America’s responsibilities, the President also drew parallels between Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States should stay in Afghanistan only as long as it takes to build the capacity of the Afghan government and security forces to defend the country against a vicious Taliban insurgency.

Obama, in fact, seemed to be implicitly advancing a new doctrine of limited U.S. military intervention. The unstated assumption: America probably will be forced to intervene again in failing and fragile states beset by terrorism or communal conflict. But we should make no open-ended commitments to counterinsurgency and national building. But war is seldom so tidy. The United States still has troops in South Korea, 57 years after the war there ended.

In all, it was an often confusing and even contradictory speech, as Fred Kaplan captured well today. It reflected the deep ambivalence of a man who rose to prominence on the strength of his anti-war stance, and now finds himself, as Commander in Chief, responsible for bringing no less than three wars – Iraq, Afghanistan and the fight against al Qaeda – to a successful conclusion.

Photo Credit: Jurveston’s photostream

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On Gibbs v. the “Professional Left”

Friday, August 13th, 2010
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

I returned yesterday from an overseas vacation to find Washington embroiled in furious controversy over Robert Gibbs’s gibes at the “professional left.” Somehow, the shock waves from this momentous development had failed to register in Corsica, which may be a gorgeous, sun-splashed rock in the Mediterranean, but is hopelessly apathetic about U.S. politics.

Fortunately for slackers like me, Washington’s chattering class is too busy for vacations. And cable TV never rests, keeping the vital discourse of democracy going even as Americans frolic heedlessly on beaches, lakes and mountains. Well, the fun’s over for me, so I might as well wade into the fray between the frazzled White House Press Secretary and his netroots tormentors.

For starters, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy to Gibbs, for whom watching cable TV is an occupational hazard. Too much of a bad thing, is, well, bad and it’s only human for Gibbs to vent about the ideological purism of talk show anchors and lefty bloggers who imagine that most Americans are pining for a full-throated liberal avenger in the White House. Real-life politics is nothing like The West Wing.

And Democrats might as well have it out now, the summer of their economic discontent, rather than, say, in October on the eve of the midterm. One truly silly argument is that Gibb’s criticisms of the administration’s “base” could alienate them and cause them to stay home on election day. In the first place, netroots types aren’t really the Democratic Party’s base.

They are a subset of liberals, who are themselves outnumbered by moderates and conservatives in the party. And they love to be attacked, because it validates their rather inflated sense of political self-importance. The worst thing you can do to the netroots is to ignore them.

In fact, every Democratic President in recent memory has been flayed by the hard left for lapses from orthodoxy. That is especially true of Franklin Roosevelt, the President many of today’s disappointed liberals say they wish Obama would be more like.

Like Obama, FDR was called a tool of Wall Street, a trimmer, an opportunist. He was bitterly assailed for trying to rescue and restore the free enterprise system rather than replacing it with central economic planning.

This drove leading liberal New Dealers like Rexford Tugwell and Harold Ickes to distraction. Here’s Tugwell:

“They [FDR’s liberal critics] are like Chinese warriors who decide battles, not by fighting, but by desertion…They rush to the aid of any liberal victor, and then proceed to stab him in the back when he fails to perform the mental impossibility of subscribing unconditionally to their dozen or more conflicting principles.” (Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, 414)

And Ickes had some equally choice words for the perfectabilian demands of his fellow liberals:

“That so-called liberals spend so much time trying to expose fellow liberals to the sneering scorn of those who delight to have their attention called to clay feet…I get very tired of the smug self-satisfaction, the holier-than-thou attitude, the sneering meticulousness of men and women with whose outlook on economic and social questions I often regretfully find myself in accord. It seems to be a fact that a reformer would rather hold up to ridicule another reformer because of some newly discovered fly speck than he would to clean out Tammany Hall. Sometimes even the fly speck is imaginary.” (Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, 413-414)

Gibbs has a point when he says that liberals undervalue Obama’s major political achievements. On the big matters that really count – the breakthrough on universal health care, the financial regulatory bill, getting out of Iraq on time, and placing liberal women on the Supreme Court (including the Court’s first Hispanic member) – Obama unquestionably has moved the needle in a progressive direction. But if history is any guide, it won’t matter – he’s still going to get pilloried by the congenitally insatiable left for something (For failing to close Gitmo, or embrace gay marriage, or demand amnesty for immigrants, etc.)

The fundamental problem with the left’s carping about Obama is the underlying assumption that their views are shared by a majority of the country: If only he would fight harder for structural transformations in American life, the latent progressive majority would spring into being and rally behind him!

This is sheer fantasy. If the country has moved in any direction over the past two years, it is to the center, and perhaps even the center right (excepting Republicans, who have surged lemming-like off the ideological cliff). What liberals see as overly tepid moves to restructure and stimulate the economy a healthy chunk of the increasingly cranky electorate, especially independences, see as overweening government intrusion.

The party’s leftists are obviously within their rights to criticize Obama when they think he deviates from the true path, just as centrists and conservatives are. And the dialectic between the President’s essential political pragmatism and left-wing fundamentalists is probably a healthy thing. It could force Obama to articulate more clearly the overarching philosophical framework that informs a Presidency that otherwise seems to proceed on the logic of serial pragmatism.

But ultimately, left leaning Democrats aren’t going to find a better horse to ride. And the more they flog Obama, the worse Democrats are likely to do this November.

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Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Why Progressives Must Embrace the Robust Optimism of “American Exceptionalism”

Friday, August 13th, 2010
Jeff Bloodworth


Jeff Bloodworth is an assistant professor of history at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania.

by Jeff Bloodworth

The Hacketts Gospel Singing Shed

The Shed -- Dermott, Arkansas

Alexis de Tocqueville would understand “The Hacketts Gospel Singing Shed.”

Located in Dermott, Arkansas on the edge of a small cotton farm, “The Shed,” as locals call it, is a venue for gospel singers and fans to gather for song, worship, and fellowship. In the 1830s, Tocqueville toured America and witnessed the very sort of religiosity and voluntarism that motivated the Hackett family to transform a tractor shed into what has become a local community hub. The young Frenchman’s resulting sociological masterpiece, Democracy in America, explains “The Shed” and offers some timeless lessons about America’s uniquely ambitious political culture –
lessons Democrats looking for keys to ending the Great Recession ought to consider.

During his travels, Tocqueville recognized how republican ideals and cheap plentiful land had produced a profoundly optimistic, democratic, individualistic, entrepreneurial, and decidedly populist people. His shorthand for the differences between the U.S. and Western European political cultures – “American Exceptionalism”— remains a handy and useful concept progressives should both heed and employ.

“Exceptionalism” is not a Limbagh-esqe a priori verification of America’s supreme awesomeness. Rather, exceptionalism cuts both ways. The very populist impulses both bred the civil rights movement and spawned the Tea Party.

In the same way, American individualism is responsible for both a vibrant economic growth, a broad middle class, technological innovation, AND an anemic welfare state, concomitant high poverty and comparatively crime rates.

In sum, exceptionalism is not chest-thumpin’ We-Will-Rock-You, rah-rah USA cornpone; Tocqueville would recognize “The Hacketts Gospel Singing Shed” by echoing Denny Green’s infamous postgame rant, “They are who we thought they were!”

American Exceptionalism not only explains “The Shed.” It should also inform Democratic policy responses, both in substance and style, to the Great Recession.

Progressives understandably shy away from a term that seemingly reeks of parochialism and sounds like a potential first and middle name for one of Sarah Palin’s children. Instead of “exceptional” substitute “difference” and then wonder how and why Germans accept 8 percent unemployment as normal, middle class Danes ride bikes to work instead of drive cars, or Canadian cities are so neat-and-tidy. For better or for worse, the American “difference” is real.

Economic recoveries are like snowflakes—no two are ever the same. This should remind us that the “dismal science” is no hard science at all. To hear Paul Krugman or the Cato Institute’s certitude, however, one would hardly realize economists are making little more than highly educated guesses.

Ironically, even as partisan economists claim all-knowing prescience their field is thankfully moving away from technocratic certainty and toward ambiguity. While it is humbling (and quite a bit scary) to accept mysterious, unpredictable, and ultimately unknowable economic forces control our material fates, this is exactly why the American difference matters.

Modern progressive economic policy should combine short-term fiscal stimulus and long-term deficit reduction with rhetorical and policy faith in the American character. While sound policy matters, more and more economists realize that intangibles and emotions often spell the difference between recovery and double dip recessions.

The American difference really matters. Four hundred years of history (including the colonial era) proves that American optimism, individualism, entrepreneurial spirit, and waves of eager immigrants will eventually lead to robust economic recovery. Talk of decline, power moving east, and a new “normal” are reminiscent of the early 1990s when observers claimed Japan and Germany would overtake American economic leadership. If memory serves, the 1990s were fairly good economic times.

President Obama has provided such leadership. Time and again he has extolled the American work ethic and unique character; it is Congressional leaders and the liberal punditocracy, however, who are out of tune with the great resilience of the American tradition., Congressional leaders – who too often dwell myopically on technocratic details, medium versus big stimulus or extending unemployment benefits – fail to convey the most important ingredient for economic policy success: sunny optimism and a profound belief in an American difference.

All peoples in all lands hope, innovate, and work for a better future. Americans do so in their own unique, different, and yes even “exceptional” way. The route of this mess takes good policy but requires bold, optimistic, and a quintessentially American leadership. It is the sort of simple yet profound wisdom that a Frenchman; the folks of Dermott, Arkansas; and skinny kid with big ears and a funny name all know in their bones.

photo credit: Jeff Bloodworth

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Posted in A New Framework for Growth and Equity, Daily Fix, Fiscal Responsibility, Fixing Our Broken Politics | No Comments »

The Three Little Dutch Boys

Thursday, August 12th, 2010
Scott Thomasson


Scott Thomasson is the domestic policy director for the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Scott Thomasson

The economic news out of Washington this week has an eerie ring of déjà vu: Congress just passed an emergency spending bill, the Fed is buying debt securities to keep the economy from sliding toward collapse, and the Administration announced it is committing billions of dollars to mortgage relief for homeowners facing foreclosure. To be sure, none of these actions has the scale or urgency of the initial responses to the financial crisis, but they are perfect examples of the policy philosophy that has dominated both economic policy since the crisis: a focus on playing defense, rather than offense.

What we saw this week were Congress, the Administration, and the Federal Reserve continuing their roles as the three little Dutch boys of the American economy, sticking fingers in the dyke to save the country from disaster. The rhetoric of stimulus is oversold and misplaced: Washington’s fiscal and monetary policies have essentially all been economic tourniquets that are better characterized as containment measures than stimulus. The Fed is shifting into quantitative easing, but only as much as necessary to fight off deflation. Congress is sending aid to the states, but only enough to keep them from having to lay off teachers. Treasury and HUD are providing assistance to the housing market, but only enough to keep people from being kicked out of their houses.

Over and over since the crisis, policy makers in both parties have remained optimistic that the U.S. economy was inherently dynamic and resilient enough that we could rely on growth to materialize from somewhere, as long as we put a solid floor underneath to contain the damage and prevent more negative shocks to the economy. Given the huge amounts being spent and our country’s history from past recessions, this was not an unreasonable approach at the time, especially for those with any concern for fiscal responsibility.

So far, the containment strategy has proved extremely successful in keeping us from sinking into a full-blown depression. However, at this point, we still have farther to go on the path to a sustainable recovery than most economists and politicians had hoped. This morning we got the new jobless numbers, and they aren’t good.  Wall Street was hoping for better news, and the markets’ negative reaction only compounds the growing anxiety (even allowing for the low volume in August, when stocks historically are more vulnerable to bad news). The extended string of bad economic news, coupled with a lack of credible cheerleading from Washington, is creating a palpable crisis of confidence in our economy and our leadership.

While the Fed is signaling between the lines that it may be prepared for stronger action, Congress and the President seem to be headed in the other direction. Campaign politics have lawmakers talking more about contractionary fiscal discipline than taking any new actions to boost the economy. Even in the debate about extending the Bush tax cuts, the options being considered do not include anything stimulative compared to the status quo. Congress has painted itself into a corner by waiting until taxes are automatically set to go up if it fails to act, and now it will likely be forced to extend most or all of them simply to avoid a contractionary fiscal outcome. Again, playing economic defense.

It’s time we think seriously about shifting gears and talking about reasonable stimulus again, instead of waiting for the next hole to plug. As Will Marshall has argued here, keeping public spending and debt under control is critically important, and Democrats need to talk openly about how we prepare for the day of reckoning when the spending claw-backs kick in, since Republicans have lost all credibility on fiscal discipline. However, growth is still the most urgent concern; the signals from bond-market vigilantes are telling us that, as Stan Collander argues well today.

There is a still a place in the debate for looking into additional stimulus, both on the tax side and with additional cost-effective spending. For example, public investment in infrastructure can be used to leverage private capital off the sidelines as well by making the private sector an active partner in stimulus efforts. Instead of continuing to put fingers in the dyke, we need to be more proactive in finding the companies in the private sector who want to rebuild the dyke, and put people and money to work again.

Photo Credit: OliBac’s Photostream

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Posted in A New Framework for Growth and Equity, Clean Energy and Modern Infrastructure, Daily Fix, Evening Fix, Fiscal Responsibility, Fixing Our Broken Politics | No Comments »

The Tennessee Primary Waltz

Friday, August 6th, 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 been a very busy week on the primary front, with a block of midwestern states — Kansas, Michigan and Missouri — on Tuesday and Tennessee on Thursday.  In all four states, a heavy menu of Republican primaries dominated the landscape, with a few notable Democratic tilts.

I did a reasonably thorough summary of the Midwestern primary results for P-Fix on Wednesday, so I’ll focus today on Tennessee.

With Mike McWherter — son of popular former Gov. Ned McWherter — being unopposed for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, the GOP contest drew the most attention.  As expected, Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, scion of the Pilot Oil fortune, used a big financial advantage and a low-key “competence” message to soundly defeat two opponents, Chattanooga Rep. Zach Wamp and Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who both tried to outflank Haslam on the Right.  Haslam drew 48 percent of the vote (Tennessee does not have runoffs), with Christian Right favorite Wamp finishing second with 29 percent and Ramsey third with 20 percent.  Haslam carried most of the state outside Wamp’s district and a few northeast counties in Ramsey’s base.

The real fireworks in Tennessee involved four highly competitive Republican U.S. House primaries.  In Wamp’s 3rd district, which is heavily Republican, self-funded radio talk show host Chuck Fleischmann (backed by Mike Huckabee, whose 2008 campaign manager, Chip Saltsman, ran Fleischmann’s campaign) edged Robin Smith — a former state party chair — who was backed by a host of DC-based conservative groups, most notably the Club for Growth (which was embarrassed when a “for more information” phone number in an anti-Fleischmann mailer turned out to connect callers to a phone sex service).

Two other competitive GOP races were in potential pick-up districts where Blue Dog Democrats are retiring.  In Bart Gordon’s 6th district, State Senator Diane Black won a very nasty three-way contest against fellow state senator Jim Tracy and conservative activist Lou Ann Zelenik.  Zelenik heated up this race with repeated ethics allegations against front-runner Black, but made national news by opposing construction of an Islamic mosque in the college town of Murfreesboro (she claimed it would be a base for the imposition of Sharia law in Tennessee, believe it or not).  In the end, it came down to geography, with Black heavily winning her state senate district while Tracy and Zelenik split the vote in their base county of Rutherford.   There was also a competitive Democratic primary in the 6th, won by decorated war veteran Brett Carter, who edged the underfunded but evocatively named Henry Clay Barry.

In John Tanner’s West Tennessee 8th district, where veteran state legislator Roy Herron easily won the Democratic nomination, Republican put on what is reported to be the most expensive House primary in the country.  Nationally-recruited farmer and gospel singer Stephen Fincher battled two massively self-funded opponents, broadcast entrepreneur George Flinn and physician Ron Kirkland in a race where total expenditures ranged up towards $8 million, with $3 million spent by Flinn alone.  Despite concerted attacks on Fincher for receiving millions in farm subsidies, he won easily with half the vote, dominated his opponents in the areas of the district most remote from Memphis.

And in the Nashville-based 5th district, eleven Republicans competed for the right to wage an uphill battle against Rep. Jim Cooper in a district comfortably won by Barack Obama in 2008.  The best-financed candidate, David Hall, defeated Huckabee-backed home-school activist Jeff Hartline and Sarah Palin’s latest “Mama Grizzly,” entertainment attorney CeCe Heil.

Finally, it wasn’t really a competitive primary, but it got attention: 9th district Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen drew a second consecutive opponent who claimed the district required African-American representation.  But former Memphis Mayor Will Herenton was widely regarded as an embarrassment, and after Cohen was endorsed by President Obama, former 9th district congressman Harold Ford, Sr., and the Congressional Black Caucus, Cohen breezed to a 79-21 win.

Next Tuesday primaries are being held in Colorado, Connecticut and Minnesota, along with a runoff in Georgia.  Colorado features very competitive Senate primaries in both parties (Bennet v. Romanoff among Democrats, Buck v. Norton among Republicans), and a strange GOP gubernatorial primary overshadowed by the meltdown of front-runner Scott McInnis and the third-party candidacy of Tom Tancredo.  Connecticut has a close Democratic gubernatorial contest between 2006 Senate nominee Ned Lamont and Stamford mayor Dan Malloy, along with a multi-candidate challenge to Republican Senate front-runner and former wrestling executive Linda McMahon.  Minnesota has a very competitive Democratic gubernatorial primary, in which the best-known candidate is former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton.  And Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial runoff has become a vicious cage match, with first-place primary finisher, Karen Handel, backed by Sarah Palin, battling former congressman Nathan Deal, backed by Newt Gingrich and a big majority of Georgia Republican congressmen and state legislators.

I’ll have previews of all these events next Tuesday.

Photo Credit: J. Stephen Conn’s Photostream

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History Does Not Repeat Itself — It Doesn’t Even Rhyme

Thursday, July 29th, 2010
Jeff Bloodworth


Jeff Bloodworth is an assistant professor of history at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania.

by Jeff Bloodworth

Somehow the summer of 2010 has become the winter of liberals’ discontent. The blogosphere and MSNBC are rife with handwringing liberals wondering, “Is Barack Obama becoming a new Jimmy Carter”? Though President Obama’s sliding approval ratings and high unemployment should concern all Democrats it is, nevertheless, time for liberals to park the Volvo, put down their collective lattes, turn off NPR and repeat after me: Barack Obama is not Jimmy Carter.

FOX, RedState, and the New York Post are truly worthy of this lame and totally unimaginative analogy. Recently, however, the HuffingtonPost, Guardian, and even Zbigniew Brzezinski have parroted this metaphor. Historical analogies might make someone appear knowledgeable but they are too often used as a substitute for actual thinking. Repeat after me: Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama are NOT like peas & carrots.

Unlike Obama, Jimmy Carter governed at the end of a durable liberal political paradigm: the New Deal era. Since the onset of the Great Depression liberals had so ruled the political landscape that even Dwight Eisenhower accepted and even expanded upon the New Deals welfare state. Indeed, when Barry Goldwater ran upon an anti-New Deal platform in 1964, he garnered less than 40 percent of the vote.

By the late 1970s, New Deal-style solutions of deficit spending and government programs had not only grown stale, they simply no longer addressed the problems confronting the nation. Reagan was hardly right on all issues, but targeted tax cuts combined with defense spending did help spark real and lasting economic growth. Similar to the seventies, today Reagan’s pragmatic conservatism has morphed into a rigid and inflexible ideology demanding reflexive and obsequious political kowtows regardless of circumstance.

While Reagan deserves much credit and liberals sowed the seeds of their own demise, significant demographic forces enabled conservatives to oversee a political realignment. It was the offspring of New Deal Democrats who elected Reagan. In moving from the industrial Midwest and Northeast to the Sunbelt, they shaped and formed Reagan’s base. From Southern California, Arizona, and Texas to Florida, millions of Americans left regions dominated by unions and white ethnic Democratic political machines for the decidedly libertarian West and socially conservative South. Thus, when Carter assumed the presidency the nation had literally undergone a seismic demographic shift, which gave Reagan an opportunity for political realignment.

Adding to the altered political geography was the legacy of 1968. In that terrible year Americans not only witnessed the assassination of MLK & RFK, it was the time during which a generation of liberals and leftists fell out of love with America. Soured by the Vietnam War, assassinations, and a white political backlash, liberals were alienated and distrustful of Middle Americans.

Unlike the 1970s, the political zeitgeist and demography are on progressives’ side. Whether it is Hispanic population growth in the Southwest and Upper South or a generation of young Obama Democrats, 2010 America ain’t 1980, 1994, or even 1936 America.

Demography, ideas, and political metrics hardly assure victory. The Republicans could take the House and even engineer a long-shot defeat of Obama in 2012. But that political success, like Democratic victories in 1970, 1974, and 1976, are short-term hiccups delaying an inevitable political realignment.

It is time, however, for progressives to move beyond the past. Indeed, with all due respect to Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson, liberals last enjoyed real and durable presidential leadership and success when Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” was at the top of the charts, “Meet Me in St. Louis” was a box office smash, and the St. Louis Browns sent the one-armed Pete Grey to patrol centerfield.

Truman, JFK, LBJ and Clinton provided an occasional oasis and even some substantial victories but today’s liberal distress only reveals we don’t know how unfamiliar we are with success. President Obama’s passage of a stimulus package, national healthcare, Wall Street reform, and a muscular and revised Afghanistan policy are the very definition of achievement. Liberal achievement has always prompted a conservative pushback. Similar to Obama’s agenda, Social Security, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and Medicare were not universally embraced upon their enactment.

Like the New Deal or any liberal era, hard work and political organization are a must if Democrats hope to safeguard and build upon their achievements. It is time for liberals, however, to stop the self-doubt and dare I say malaise (yes, I used that word—as a reverse jinx). We have an eloquent and inspiring leader in Barack Obama who heads up an extraordinarily savvy political operation. Though only Bing Crosby might recognize it liberalism is back. Repeat after me: progressives get shit done.

Photo Credit: Steve Rhodes’ Photostream

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Sen. Webb Tackles Preferences

Monday, July 26th, 2010
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

Democrats like to think of themselves as champions of economic fairness for working families. But for decades now, working class voters – especially white ones – haven’t been feeling the love. Even as their economic condition has deteriorated, they persist in voting against their “class interest” by voting Republican.

Few U.S. political leaders have studied this phenomenon more intently than Virginia Senator James Webb. In a thought-provoking Wall Street Journal article last week, Webb took aim at government policies intended to promote “diversity,” which he says have marginalized many white workers.

Webb acknowledged Washington’s responsibility to redress the wrongs endured by black Americans. But he maintained that affirmative action policies have been expanded to include many people, including recent immigrants, who cannot by any stretch of the imagination claim to be victims of discrimination. Such policies give a leg up to minorities in competition for government jobs and contracts, broadcast licenses, college admissions and even private sector hiring.

“Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years,” Webb wrote.

Excepting programs intended to benefit black Americans, “government-directed diversity programs should end,” he added.

Webb’s criticism of group preferences is reminiscent of President Bill Clinton’s “mend it, don’t end it” approach to reforming affirmative action. Perhaps because of their own humble origins, both men feel viscerally that policies that treat all whites as privileged, regardless of wide variations in their socio-economic background and circumstances, make a mockery of the liberal ideal of equal justice.

That glaring contradiction at the heart of contemporary liberalism offers a more-than-plausible explanation for why non-college white voters spurn Democrats. Liberals generally have preferred other explanations: endemic racism, or the supposed power of cultural issues to trump economic ones. Webb is challenging Democrats to come to grips with the obvious: white working class voters have good reasons for believing the party doesn’t stand for economic fairness for them.

All this is highly relevant to Democrats’ electoral prospects, in the midterm election and beyond. In last year’s big elections in New York, Virginia and even solidly Democratic Massachusetts, only a third of working class whites picked the Democratic candidate. According to a recent Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll, a mere 34  percent of non-college white men and 37 percent of non-college women approve of the job President Obama is doing.

Even among college white men, Obama’s approval stands at 42 percent, and 50 percent for women. In fact, the sharp drop in Obama’s public esteem Gallup seems to be largely due to the defection of white voters, and women in particular, since nearly two-thirds of minority voters approve of his performance.

Obama and the Democrats don’t need to win a majority of white voters, but they can’t afford to lose them by enormous margins, either. To close the gap, progressives must do a better job of addressing the real economic interests of white working class, which after all are not much different than those of working class blacks, Latinos or Asians.

What’s needed is a new agenda for modernizing public infrastructure, expanding access to education and retooling the American economy to win in global competition. The details of that agenda are a subject for another day. But Sen. Webb is right: Progressives should start by tailoring affirmative action policies narrowly to those they were originally intended to help, and let everyone else compete for economic opportunities without government’s thumb on the scales.

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Senate Punts Carbon Price

Friday, July 23rd, 2010
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

After much self-congratulation over passing a massive financial regulatory bill, the U.S. Senate has punted on pricing carbon. That decision is likely to have a bigger long-term impact on the U.S. economy, and not in a good way.

Senate leaders yesterday conceded they don’t have the votes to put a price on carbon. Instead, they’ll try to pass a pallid energy bill that raises liability caps on oil companies and makes modest gestures toward energy efficiency. Even the catastrophic BP oil spill, it seems, was not enough to overcome lawmakers’ fear of being accused of raising taxes on energy as the economy struggles, even though a carbon price wouldn’t have gone into effect for several years.

Well, there’s always next year — except that the midterm election will likely bring in more Republicans wedded to climate denial and cheap fossil fuels. So the Senate’s failure to act is a costly setback from an economic, security and environmental perspective. It will prolong America’s dependence on oil and fossil fuels, worsen our trade deficit, retard investment in clean technology and low-carbon fuels, and forfeit leadership in energy innovation to other countries. And it means the United States won’t do its part to lower carbon emissions and thereby stop overheating the planet.

All this suggests progressives will have to rethink their approach to achieving a low-carbon economy. Not only is “cap and trade” dead, Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said those words are no longer in his vocabulary.

PPI has long considered pricing carbon the sine qua non of progressive energy policy, although we have been agnostic as to how. We helped to design the cap and trade architecture in several pathbreaking legislative proposals (the Lieberman-McCain and Lieberman-Warner bills, as well as Senator Tom Carper’s “4P” bill), and proposed a “tailpipe trading” system to cover auto emissions. We continue to believe that cap and trade offers the twin advantages of environmental certainty — a quantifiable limit on the amount of carbon Americans emit – and strong incentives for companies to invest in energy efficiency and innovation.

At the same time, however, we’ve endorsed a straight up carbon tax, as well as setting a “floor” under oil prices to prevent their volatility from inhibiting investments in clean fuels. The key is to price carbon realistically, by taking into account the “externalities” not included in the price of gas at the pump (or coal for that matter): the hundreds of billions we spend each year to assure access to fossil fuels, as well as the environmental damage done by concentrating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

To free market fundamentalists, ending such implicit subsidies to fossil fuels is tantamount to raising taxes on energy. So be it. We need to raise the cost of burning fossil fuels and lower the cost of low-carbon alternative fuels. This is a matter of urgent national interest, and President Obama will need to propose a new clean energy strategy to the next Congress.

Photo Credit: Americaspower’s Photostream

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From Georgia to Oklahoma

Friday, July 23rd, 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

I won’t go through the all the results for Tuesday’s Georgia primary, since an earlier P-Fix post covered the basics.  But I will mention a few details that I omitted in the quick piece I did on Wednesday.

In the gubernatorial contest, while Democrat Roy Barnes looks highly competitive for the general election (particularly if the Republican runoff gets as nasty as it looks like it may), it’s worth noting that turnout for the GOP primary was just under 700,000, while turnout for the Democratic side was just under 400,000. While turnout in both parties was terrible, and some of the disparity was attributable to the more competitive nature of the GOP battle (and the attendant television ads), it’s a reminder that this state which didn’t have a Republican governor from the early days of Reconstruction until 2002 now has a decided red tint. To win, Barnes will need to run a very good campaign (he’s certainly reconfirmed his reputation as an outstanding fundraiser), while taking advantage of the opportunities the GOP has created in eight years of lackluster governance of the state, and in the extremism of the primary messages of its candidates this year. If Barnes does win, he would interrupt what would otherwise certainly be a blatant Republican gerrymandering effort, made all the worse by Georgia’s acquisition of an additional congressional district.

A second observation is that this is one GOP primary where geography seemed to matter more than ideology or the association of this or that candidate with the Tea Party or some national conservative figure. I’ve posted a fairly elaborate analysis of this topic at FiveThirtyEight, but suffice it to say that Karen Handel finished first more because she is from vote-rich metro Atlanta than because she was endorsed by Jan Brewer and Sarah Palin. The endorsements definitely helped her overcome a financial deficit by generating free media, but in the end half the primary vote was cast in her base region, and that was the most important difference. And that’s also why she has to be considered a heavy favorite in the runoff, since her opponent, Nathan Deal, did well only in his north Georgia base, which provides a much smaller segment of the GOP vote. It’s a measure of the importance of geography that Handel trounced Deal in the Atlanta suburb of Cobb County, home of Deal’s padrone, Newt Gingrich.

Perhaps because of this disadvantage, Deal looks likely to spend the three-week runoff attacking Handel for insufficient conservatism, which won’t be easy given her Palin association and her own harsh record on issues ranging from taxes (she wants to abolish the state income taxes and rely instead on regressive consumption taxes to finance state government) to immigration (as Secretary of State, she initiated a harsh voter ID system that ensnared a good many native citizen voters on primary day). So far Deal has mainly pounded Handel for supporting a rape-and-incest exception to an abortion ban, which used to be an acceptable conservative position, and for making a small contribution to the Log Cabin Republicans back when she was running for office in culturally tolerant Fulton County (Atlanta). Since Handel’s main attack line on Deal has involved ethics allegations, this could be a truly nasty culture-war dominated runoff that could drive up both candidates’ negatives.

In terms of the congressional races, there will be four Republican runoffs on August 10, two in safe Republican districts, one in a safe Democratic district, and one to choose an opponent for theoretically vulnerable Democrat John Barrow (D-GA) (though he is likely to have a big financial advantage and Barack Obama carried his district).

Down-ballot, there will be a highly contentious Republican runoff for Attorney General that could boost statewide turnout.  And though it’s not directly connected to the primaries, the general election will be complicated by the fact that outgoing GOP Gov. Sonny Perdue is backing an independent candidate for State School Superintendent because the Republican nominee opposes accepting Race to the Top dollars.

The next primary is in Oklahoma on July 27, where there are competitive gubernatorial contests in both parties.

In polling news, PPP has had some interesting assessments of the Florida governor’s race.  The late but free-spending entry of controversial former hospital executive and health reform opponent Rick Scott in the GOP contest has upset a lot of apple carts. A primary survey shows Scott beating long-time front-runner and party warhorse Bill McCollum 43-29, mainly by driving McCollum’s approval ratio among Florida Republicans to a dismal 26-40. But a general election poll shows Democrat Alex Sink beating either Republican (along with independent candidate Bud Chiles). And in the general electorate, Scott’s approval ratio is 23-41 and McCollum’s a truly disastrous 16-51. Like Georgia, this is a state where a Democratic gubernatorial victory could have major implications for redistricting.

In non-candidate polling news, Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com has a solid and very thorough critique of the new Politico “Power and the People” surveys by Mark Penn comparing the views of Americans generally with those of “D.C. Elites.”

Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.

Photo credit: Chuck “Caveman” Coker’s Photostream

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Clinton to Vietnam, Human Rights Raised. Does She Really Care?

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Jim Arkedis


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

by Jim Arkedis

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised concern over human rights during her trip to Vietnam, a country she last visited in the waning days of her husband’s presidency.  Per the NYT:

Noting Vietnam’s recent jailing of democracy activists, attacks on religious groups and curbing of Internet social-networking sites, Mrs. Clinton said she raised the status of human rights in a meeting with a deputy prime minister, Pham Gia Khiem. … She said the United States would press Vietnam to do more to protect individual freedom. …

Mrs. Clinton’s comments were notable, given that she has played down human rights concerns in visits to Vietnam’s neighbor, China. But her timing, at the outset of the visit, suggested that she wanted to make her point, and move on.

The last line is particularly intriguing, and offers potential fodder to critics from across the political spectrum: from conservatives wed to George Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” to liberal critics to issue-focused NGOs, like Human Rights Watch and Freedom House. Is the Secretary of State just making her point and moving on? Have human rights become simply a talking point, as Secretary Clinton unfortunately suggested before her first trip to China in early 2009?

Despite her regrettable gaffes about China, she’s said that her more nuanced approach is “designed to make a difference, not prove a point.” So what is Secretary Clinton’s approach, exactly?

In Russia, a country desperate for some international respect, a stern human rights stare-down could prove counter-productive. The balance between economics, bilateral security, multi-lateral security, climate change and personal freedoms demands measured engagement. Would, for example, Russia have cooperated on New START or Iran sanctions if the Obama administration issued one human rights tongue-lashing on top of another? Anything’s possible, but such agreements would have undoubtedly been more difficult to come by.

That’s why, in big countries as Will Marshall wrote on this site the other day, Secretary Clinton is focused on building civil societies:

In an important speech that got little attention back home, she unveiled what she called a 21st century approach to promoting democracy by defending civil society. Clinton described an independent civic sector as a nursery for democratic citizenship, no less critical to a free society than representative government and a market economy. And she warned of a spreading global backlash against civil society…. This marks a significant departure from the Bush administration’s approach to democracy, which centered on demands for elections and accountable political institutions. …

Clinton aimed more modestly, but shrewdly, at bolstering a particular aspect of liberty – freedom of association. In authoritarian countries, civil society or “third sector” organizations play an especially vital role in building the infrastructure of liberal democracy. … [Clinton's approach is] deeply subversive, in that it enables indigenous reformers to carve out space for civic action that is independent of state control. By defending the right of CSOs to organize and operate, and receive international support, the United States and other free countries can promote democracy from the ground up.

It’s in this vein that Secretary Clinton addressed an audience on cyber freedom at the Newseum earlier this year.

Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. …  They’ve expunged words, names, and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Expect the direct challenging on human rights to continue behind closed doors, but expect the Obama administration to take a more indirect, but ultimately more effective path in public.

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Clinton Defends Civil Society

Monday, July 19th, 2010
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

President Obama has reorganized U.S. foreign policy around a new trinity of diplomacy, development and defense. That’s been a sore point among some progressive internationalists, who see the omission of a fourth “d” – democracy – as an overreaction to George W. Bush’s messianic freedom agenda.

Administration officials insist that they aren’t abandoning democracy, just promoting it in new and more subtle ways. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently offered an intriguing case in point.

As Americans celebrated Independence Day, Clinton was in Krakow, Poland for the 10th anniversary gathering of the Community of Democracies. In an important speech that got little attention back home, she unveiled what she called a 21st century approach to promoting democracy by defending civil society. Clinton described an independent civic sector as a nursery for democratic citizenship, no less critical to a free society than representative government and a market economy. And she warned of a spreading global backlash against civil society.

Over the last six years, Clinton noted, 50 governments have clamped down on the ability of civil society or non-governmental organizations to operate freely. She called out persistent violators by name: not just usual suspects like Russia, China and Iran, but also aspiring autocracies like Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and some, such as Egypt and Ethiopia, that are closely allied with Washington. “An attack on civic activism and civil society is an attack on democracy,” she told the assembly.

This marks a significant departure from the Bush administration’s approach to democracy, which centered on demands for elections and accountable political institutions. “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you,” Bush declared in his 2004 inaugural address. Against the backdrop of the war in Iraq and the war on terror, however, Bush’s freedom agenda acquired a menacing and coercive aura. And when the United States insisted on elections in Gaza, only to see Hamas win in 2006, many critics questioned whether elections are always the right starting point in democracy promotion.

Clinton aimed more modestly, but shrewdly, at bolstering a particular aspect of liberty – freedom of association. In authoritarian countries, civil society or “third sector” organizations play an especially vital role in building the infrastructure of liberal democracy. The United States learned the hard way during the Bush years that democracy can rarely be imposed by force, and from the top down. Support for local voluntary associations, on the other hand, is harder to caricature as some heavy-handed U.S. attempt to “export democracy.” Yet it’s deeply subversive, in that it enables indigenous reformers to carve out space for civic action that is independent of state control. By defending the right of CSOs to organize and operate, and receive international support, the United States and other free countries can promote democracy from the ground up.

Also intriguing was Secretary Clinton’s choice of venue. The Community of Democracies (CD) was launched in 2000 by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Bronisław Geremek. Although originally seen as a way to consolidate the wave of democratic reformism that swept the world after the end of the Cold War, the Community often seemed adrift during the last decade. Lax membership rules haven’t helped: some of its 104 members aren’t by any stretch genuine democracies.

If it is going to be a force for democratic solidarity in the world, the CD needs a clear and invigorating mission. Clinton suggested one: rallying the world’s democracies to support embattled civil society groups. She proposed a four-part plan:

  1. Setting up a mechanism at the CD for monitoring repressive measures against civil society organizations.
  2. Encouraging the United Nations Human Rights Council to champion the right of association.
  3. Enlisting regional organizations such as the Organization of American States, the African Union and the Arab League to protect civil society.
  4. Creating some sort of “rapid response mechanism” to bring joint diplomatic pressure to bear on governments that suppress civil society.

In addition, Clinton said the United States would contribute $2 million to a new fund dedicated to helping NGOs targeted by repressive rulers.

True, these are not especially bold measures. And the Human Rights Council, dominated by autocratic regimes, can scarcely be trusted to defend human rights, let alone the right to associate. But Clinton rather deftly managed to elevate the issue of defending civil society without turning it into a purely American demand or preoccupation. In fact, a CD working group headed by Canada is expected to take the lead.

An internationalist approach, in which America coaxes rather than trying to dominate, is essential at a time when distrust of U.S. unilateralism still lingers, even in a relatively friendly forum like the CD. Our task now is to work with like-minded countries to make defense of civil society an international norm, just as Americans were instrumental in getting the United Nations to adopt the International Declaration of Human Rights after World War II. In this respect, Secretary Clinton’s speech was a strong start.

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