Should nuclear power continue to be an integral part of our national energy mix? What long-term impact will the Fukushima incident have for nuclear power in the US and around the world? To find out the answers to these and more nuclear power-related questions, please come to a PPI Policy Briefing TODAY, March 28, from 12-1 p.m., at the House Science and Technology Committee Hearing Room, Room 2325 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

Featured panelists will be:

• Mitchell Baer, Office of Policy and International Affairs, U.S. Department of Energy;
• Dr. James Conca, Director of the Waste Sampling and Characterization Facility (WSCF), U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford Site;
• Margaret Harding, President, 4 Factor Consulting; and
• Micheal A. Levi, Director of Energy Security and Climate Change Program, Council on Foreign Relations.

Conca is the co-author of the recent PPI Policy Memo, “Getting Real About Energy: A Balanced Portfolio for America’s Future,” which argues for a 30-year target energy mix for electricity generation of one-third fossil fuels, one-third renewable sources (wind, solar, biomass, hydro), and one-third nuclear generation.

TO RSVP for the event, click here.

First, while Japan is the world’s most seismically active country, vast swaths of the United States aren’t active. We probably won’t be siting new reactors on the San Andreas Fault.

Second, what’s been most striking about the Daiichi plant isn’t its vulnerability, but its resilience. The 40-year-old facility plant has thus far withstood one of the biggest earthquakes in memory, followed by a tsunami and multiple interruptions in power. Scientists say hydrogen explosions have vented minor amounts of radiation into the air.

Read the entire memo

It’s clear that China’s Navy is growing in size and quality. Not only does China have the largest navy in East Asia, it has an increasingly modern and capable force of imported and indigenously produced destroyers, frigates, missile patrol craft, and submarines. Beijing is even planning to deploy its own aircraft carriers, a development sure to alarm neighbors such as Japan, Vietnam, and India.

But what does it mean for American policy makers? Should the United States increase its own maritime power in response to Beijing’s growing strength? Are there diplomatic levers that Washington might pull to forestall potential Chinese aggression? Below, I explore these issues, first by giving a brief history of China’s evolving naval strategies since the People’s Republic began in 1949. (It’s critical that U.S. policy makers understand the evolution of China’s thinking about the roles and missions of its navy.) Then, I provide a full accounting of recent Chinese naval hardware developments. Finally, I draw policy recommendations designed to help American policy makers manage the challenges that have arisen as a result of China’s improving capabilities, regional assertiveness and expanding global interests.

In short, the U.S. will need to strengthen its ties to key countries in East Asia and develop strategic and tactical military concepts and capabilities that would allow it to counter China’s growing military power. Meanwhile, U.S. policy makers must seek collaboration with the Chinese military in an effort to highlight the benefits of being a global stakeholder to Beijing.

Read the entire memo

When parsing Bowles’ and Simpson’s suggestions, it’s worth bearing in mind the authors’ guiding principle: “America cannot be great if we go broke.” In essence, the proposal channels the White House’s own National Security Strategy, “Our economy… serves as the wellspring of American power.”

That’s the bad news: both the Deficit Commission and administration are right, and the country is in a bad spot.  Here’s the worse news, as told in the introduction of the Deficit Commission’s Report: The Problem Is Real; the Solution Is Painful; There’s No Easy Way Out; Everything Must Be On the Table, and Washington Must Lead.

The Bowles/Simpson proposals do deserve serious consideration. They also must be placed in context — first, they are “illustrative” cuts, ones that are on the table and illustrate how the Commission might save $100 million in defense over five years. These cuts are on top of Secretary of Defense Bob Gates plan, announced over the summer, to wring $100 billion out of the Pentagon’s $700+ billion budget over five years, by reducing contractors, saving on personnel costs, and riding herd on and/or canceling over-budget and delayed programs. While many of Gates’ plans coincide with Bowles/Simpson (contractors and V-22 Osprey, for example), reconciling what to do with the savings is sure to cause a fight.  More on that below…

It’s most useful to evaluate the Bowles/Simpson illustrative cuts against three core criteria:

1. Does a proposal fundamentally weaken the country’s ability to defend itself?
2. If not, does a proposal fundamentally weaken the country’s core non-military national interests?
3. If not, does the savings benefit to the country outweigh the parochial interest of the proposed cut?

With that in mind, on balance, most of the Commission’s proposals on Defense spending are quite sensible.  For readability’s sake, I’ll lump several of the proposals into larger categories.

First, a starting point:

A simple way to enforce budgetary discipline at the Pentagon starts with one basic policy adjustment: end the practice of supplemental budgeting. DoD has three budgets, not one: a baseline appropriation, plus two “supplemental” appropriations that are supposed to pay for the war, but do oh-so-much-more. I’ve written about the problem for Forbes.com, and you can see an excerpt here:

Having three budgets is like having three strikes in a baseball at-bat — you have the luxury to swing and miss twice. Projects that don’t make the baseline DoD budget (strike one!) can be considered in either of the additional supplementals (strike two! strike three!) before they’re “out.” Ending the supplementals would be like giving the batter just one strike. By combining all defense spending into one (larger) appropriation each year, the batter has just one swing — miss the first time, that’s it. The practice would force Congress to make hard choices that prioritize the war-fighter.

If we have just one budget, it would be much easier to implement many practices recommended in the Bowles/Simpson plan, such as “reducing procurement by 15 percent” and “reduce ‘other procurement’”.  Procurement is bloated with multiple, supplemental budgets.  Having just one a year forces appropriators to make hard choices.

Savings over five years: $28.5 billion, per Commission estimates.

Next, the low hanging fruit amongst the “illustrative” cuts:

Salary freezes for civilians and military, doubling cuts to contracting personnel and replacing some with civilians. These check all categories without question. The commission could perhaps go even further by advocating a freeze in combat pay as well — Yes, our military has performed heroically in difficult circumstances, but we’re talking about not increasing warzone pay, we’re not talking about eliminating it.  Reducing contractors is a no-brainer.

Troop reductions in Europe and Asia. Europe is the easier sell: Twenty years after the Cold War and with staging needs for Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, the American military does not need as extensive a footprint on the European continent.  The Commission proposes reducing American forces in Korea by 17,000 troops, which leave 11,500 by my math. That’s hardly a comforting thought, with an unstable and nuclear-minded North Korean regime in the midst of a power transition.  We would continue to maintain 32,000 in Japan, and it perhaps makes more sense to split reductions between the two countries, even though removing troops from Japan has been a local political hot potato of late.

Modernize TriCare: Let’s be honest: this isn’t a move to “modernize” defense health care, it’s an effort to bring the military’s health system’s co-pays and deductables in line with cost-structures of private insurers.  Does it seem like we’re giving our servicemembers the shaft?  Yes.  But are military health care costs, “are eating the Defense Department alive,” according to Secretary Gates. It’s unfortunate, but servicemembers’ premiums must rise to correct this problem.

Reduce base support, facilities maintenance, retail activities, and DoD schooling: With the exception of closing unused DoD schools, there’s no question these cuts will hurt.  But is reducing the deficit more important?  In these times, yes.

Savings over five years: $45.1 billion, per Commission estimates.

Slightly tougher to swallow:

Weapons Cuts: Not all platforms are created equal: certain are needed for modernization, others for replacement, and yet others to fill niche capabilities.

The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) takes a beating from Bowles/Simpson, something followers of the program probably suspected.  After all, when procurement of the F-22 was ended last year at 187 planes, DoD proclaimed itself ready to buy 2,443 F-35 JSFs instead.  At the time, 2,443 JSFs seemed a preposterously and unrealistically large number.  It still does, which is why a revised purchase plan, mixing in refurbishments of cheaper F-16s and F-18s while cancelling the USMC’s version of the JSF outright, falls within my comfort level.

We’ve already purchased 288 V-22 Osprey, which is two-thirds of the planned buy, and enough to meet the lion’s share of mission requirements.  Along those lines, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle’s (EFV) capabilities are ably substituted by other technologies under development, allowing for EFV’s cancellation.

The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Ground Combat Vehicle, and Joint Tactical Radio would be delayed, not canceled, under the Bowles/Simpson plan, which seems reasonable as the Army’s tactical vehicle fleet received an unexpected influx of cash to procure IED-hardened MRAP vehicles for Iraq.

Reduce R&D: This might seem unwise (“Why do we want to cut R&D while we’re dropping weapons? Shouldn’t we invest in developing weapons even if we don’t end up producing them?”), but it’s not as big a deal as it originally seems.  Fact is, by combining the defense budgets and reducing certain weapons buys, R&D organically decreases as a natural function of those actions.

Knowing how Congress works, it’s highly unlikely that these planned weapons buys will be fully endorsed.  But they will likely be negotiated reductions, in order to maintain capability while sending a strong signal that there’s a changing culture of fiscal discipline.

Savings over five years: up to, but probably less than $30.45 billion, per Commission estimates.

Up in the Air:

Secretary of DefenseBob Gates came out with his own plan to trim $100billion from the Pentagon’s budget, which he intended to reinvest in DoD modernization plans. He was coyly getting out in front of Bowles-Simpson, who want to take Gates’ savings and apply them not to modernization, but rather to deficit reduction.

The trick is convincing the Secretary to follow through with these plans, knowing that the Pentagon won’t get to keep all the planned savings. The good news is this fight probably won’t happen, as Gates will likely leave his post before final decisions are made. Savings reinvestments is just one of the reasons the new Secretary’s views on deficit reduction will have to align with Obama’s.

You Can’t Touch This:

The only illustrative cut in the Bowles-Simpson plan that I whole-heartedly disagree with is the notion of canceling the Navy’s Future Maritime Prepositioning Force. These plans are currently under study, and if executed correctly, could end up saving money while allowing the Navy to project force more efficiently in an era of restrained budgets. There’s still work to be done here, and at $2.7 billion in potential savings, isn’t exactly a budget buster.

Photo credit: pingnews.com

“We’re living in a global rail industry,” said an official at a large U.S. transportation manufacturer that depends on foreign parts. “Insisting on all-American content could mean losing 10 years in building our HSR supply chain.”

Karen Rae, deputy director of the Federal Railroad Administration, surprised rail advocates when she announced last month that the White House has decided to enforce the “domestic buying preference” provision of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA), which authorized $8 billion in HSR grants to state governments earlier this year.

Rae said at a conference sponsored by America 2050 that the administration had determined there was “enough excess manufacturing capacity in the country” to permit HSR equipment to be made of U.S. content. As a result, the administration did not anticipate issuing exemptions from the domestic buying rule, as permitted under Section 504(2) of PRIIA.

While Rae lauded the decision as a tool “to help reenergize manufacturing in the U.S.,” executives canvassed in the railway supply business say the provision could have the opposite effect.

“We could wind up getting 100 percent of nothing,” said one executive who exchanged candor for anonymity.

Things We Don’t Make Anymore

He and others say the biggest obstacle to American content is simply that this country does not produce some critical components. Take computer chips. They are not made in the U.S. There are American-owned suppliers, such as Intel, but the product itself is manufactured in Asia.

Computer chips are everywhere in modern rail cars, controlling the electric doors, regulating the heat and air conditioning, monitoring the mechanical and electrical systems, managing the P.A. systems and customer-information signs, to say nothing of Wi-Fi and other electronics that would be required in any HSR car order.

Outside of components, the sad fact is that there has not been a builder of passenger cars since Pullman-Standard Co. completed an order for Superliner cars for Amtrak in the 1980s and then went out of business.

In place of Pullman-Standard and other former U.S. manufacturing powerhouses, such as the Budd Co., a number of foreign-based companies have developed facilities to assemble rail cars.

The German giant, Siemens, builds light-rail vehicles (streetcars) from imported parts at a factory in Sacramento. Japan’s Kawasaki assembles commuter railcars in Lincoln, Neb., and New York City subway cars in Yonkers, NY.

French-based Alstom built Surfliner shells for the state of California in Brazil, shipped them to Baltimore and trucked them to a former railroad shop in Hornell, NY, for final assembly.

Bombardier built the shells for Amtrak’s Acela trains in Quebec and then shipped them across the border to a plant in Vermont for finishing. Talgo builds in Spain, but can do final assembly in the U.S.

Morrison Knudsen tried to break into the car-building business 20 years ago, but failed when projects like the proposed “Texas Triangle” HSR line collapsed.

In short, while there are many abandoned manufacturing plants in the U.S., it would take time to convert these plants into usable spaces for HSR equipment. Even more time and treasure would be required to develop a workforce capable of building technology that has more in common with modern aviation than lumbering freight trains.

What’s Consistent with the Public Interest?

China has offered to supply the equipment and engineers to help build California’s proposed HSR line between San Diego and Sacramento. If California accepted China’s offer, would the state have to repay the $2.25 billion it was awarded in PRIIA funding?

The language of the federal law is broadly written. In carrying out a rail project “funded in whole or in part with a grant under this title,” PRIIA calls for recipients to purchase “only unmanufactured articles, material, and supplies mined or produced in the U.S.” or “articles, material, and supplies manufactured in the U.S. substantially from articles, material, and supplies mined, produced, or manufactured in the U.S.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) can waive this rule under three conditions: if the article is unreasonably expensive, if it is not produced in sufficient quantities, or if the requirement is “inconsistent with the public interest.”

It was assumed by the supply industry that the administration would use the law’s exemption liberally in order to expedite development of HSR lines. But Rae said that DOT’s No. 2 official, John Porcari, has been working with the White House to develop plans for 100 percent content and did not plan to issue any waivers.

Unintended Consequences

According to several suppliers, the literal interpretation of PRIIA could actually discourage American companies from entering the HSR field.

“Who wants to go through all these hoops only to find out you’re disqualified because some component is not considered American by a bureaucrat,” asked an executive.

One of the clearest-cut beneficiaries of the rule would appear to be domestic steelmakers supplying new track and structural steel. But who or what is a domestic steelmaker these days? Is it a company that owns plants in the U.S., a company owned by U.S. stockholders, or a company domiciled in the U.S.?

At present, foreign-owned-and-headquartered corporations control more than 35 percent of steel produced in the U.S. What’s more, half of the steel made here originates from raw materials mined outside of the country.

Similarly, GE Transportation, based in Erie, Pa., does a brisk business selling heavy-haul freight locomotives to China, Mexico, Brazil and Australia. Creating barriers for foreign suppliers may mean that overseas railroads won’t buy American in retaliation.

Getting Back on Track

The Obama administration would be wise to break free from the protectionist impulses of PRIIA and let all domestic and global rail suppliers compete for HSR contracts. Out of such competition, the best equipment and lowest prices should emerge.

A robust government policy toward high-speed rail would do wonders to revitalize entrepreneurship and encourage the private sector to enter the field.

This is the true challenge facing the Obama administration — establishing a long-term strategy for HSR, including how to finance the system. Parsing what is and isn’t “100% American” isn’t sound policy, it’s crowd-pleasing politics that will only delay the implementation of the administration’s own program.

Photo credit: Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Photostream

Not so very long ago, we were not in this humiliating position. In fact, we operated trains that amazed and impressed the rest of the world. These trains were called streamliners, and their very names – Silver Meteor, Flying Yankee, Rocky Mountain Rocket, Denver Zephyr – connoted speed and luxury. In the period between 1935 and 1950, the 10 fastest scheduled passenger trains in the world were all U.S. streamliners.

One of the great racetracks of this period was the New York Central Railroad’s four-track mainline between Buffalo and Cleveland. Paging through an old timetable, I counted 42 daily passenger trains running on this line in the 1940s. Such trains as the Commodore Vanderbilt, Fifth Avenue Special and the extra-fare choice of tycoons and Hollywood starlets, The 20th Century Limited, routinely topped 90 miles per hour on straightaways and averaged 60-65 mph, including station stops.

The 187 miles between Buffalo and Cleveland were covered in 3 hours then. Today, the sole passenger train traveling this route, Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited, takes 3½ hours, if (and this is a big if) the train is on schedule.

The Rise and Fall of American Rail

What differentiated our streamliners from contemporary trains in Europe and Asia was advanced technology. American railroads and equipment suppliers had not only pioneered the diesel-electric locomotive in the 1930s – a quantum leap over from the old steam locomotive – but introduced lightweight cars with better wheel sets, couplers, braking systems and lower centers of gravity to negotiate curves at higher speeds.

The interiors of these streamliners abounded in creature comforts – wide double-paned windows, recessed fluorescent lighting, luxurious reclining seats and the first air-conditioning found in any commercial transport.

Streamliners attracted customers by the carload. In fact, they made money. Wall Street consultants Coverdale & Colpitts surveyed 58 streamliners in 1948 and found that they grossed $98 million and netted $48 million after out-of-pocket costs, for a return of 49 percent.*

And then almost as quickly as the streamliner era flourished, it ended. There were a number of reasons for the rapid decline of rail passenger service, but the overwhelming factor was the explosion of government funding for new highways and airports. In 1956, Dwight Eisenhower signed the Interstate and Defense Highways Act. First estimated to cost $27 billion, the Interstate system took more than 30 years and $200 billion to complete. At the same time, state and local governments bankrolled airport construction, while Washington subsidized air carriers by fixing artificially high rates for U.S. airmail contracts.

The twin impact of airways and roadways was devastating on American railroads, which, after all, were private companies that paid property taxes and ticket taxes on their operations. For example, between 1956 and 1969, a total of 28,800 miles of interstate highways were opened to traffic. In the same period, 59,400 miles of railroad were taken out of passenger service.

From 2,500 daily intercity trains in 1954 (that’s excluding commuter service), fewer than 500 trains were left when the National Railroad Passenger Corp., or Amtrak, took over intercity rail service in 1971. Outside of the Boston-Washington Northeast Corridor, America’s passenger train had virtually disappeared.

American Technology Goes Abroad

So carelessly tossed away by our policymakers and politicians, the American streamliner did not simply die during those dismal decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, it rose from the ashes as its key technological features moved overseas, welcomed by a visionary group of railroaders.

An all-electric test train ordered by Louis Armand, head of the French national railway, shattered world records with 208-mph speeds in March 1955. This achievement proved the capacity of rail equipment using overhead electricity for propulsion to operate far above 100 mph on a sustained basis.

The French experiments inspired Japan’s Minister of Transport Shinhi Sogo. In 1956, the same year that President Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highways Act, Sogo began planning a rail line without sharp curves or up and down grades that would permit streamlined, all-electric trains to run at extremely high speeds with utmost safety

To operate the Shinkansen, or “New Trunk Line,” between Tokyo and Osaka, Sogo actively imported technology from America, including the two-axle trucks of the Budd Manufacturing Co. and dynamic braking pioneered by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division. To top it off, the Japan ordered the most advanced computer used outside of military applications (built by yet another American company, Bendix) to operate the line’s signal and dispatching systems.

Remarkably, the U.S. government gave Japan foreign aid – money purportedly going to an underdeveloped country – to build a rail infrastructure far superior to our own. Opened in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, the first Shinkansen train traveled at a maximum of 125 mph. The latest-generation Shinkansen runs at 188 mph, and its ancestor is in a museum.

Japan wasn’t alone. After developing moderately high-speed trains on mixed freight-and-passenger lines, France opened Europe’s first all-new railroad between Paris and Lyon in 1981. This route featured the now-famous TGVs, or “Trains of Great Speed.” Six thousand of 20,000 rail miles in France are now covered by TGV trains. High-speed service has expanded into Belgium, Germany, Holland, Italy, Switzerland and Spain in Europe and in China, South Korea and Taiwan in Asia.

Playing Catch-Up

Compared to these developments, we’re still in the horse-and-buggy stage. Amtrak’s self-declared high-speed line, the Northeast Corridor, does not even qualify as high speed by world standards. The Acela Express is designed for 150 mph, but only goes that fast for about 25 miles in Rhode Island.

Overall, Acela trains average only 67 mph between Boston and New York. South of New York, Acela operates at an average of 77 mph and can’t go faster than 125 mph anywhere because the overhead electric wires are obsolete and can slip off the train’s pantographs at higher speeds.

This is what happens when you starve a business for 60 years. It becomes stunted. Our passenger rail system is stunted today not because of some inevitable law of economics or natural outgrowth of competition. It’s stunted because of longstanding government policy that thoughtlessly, absentmindedly, let some wonderful American-made technology slip away.

This piece is an excerpt from Mark Reutter’s keynote address at the High-Speed Rail Summit last week in Erie, Pa.

* “Streamliners Earn More Than Ever,” Railway Age, March 4, 1950.

Having returned from three years in China, Fallows finds America in a funk. Bled by war and terrorism, beset by a lingering financial crisis and stubbornly high unemployment, facing stagnant wages and growing inequality, saddled with obsolete infrastructure and massive public debt, the United States today seems far removed from the confident “hyperpower” of a decade ago. Among the global commentariat, the “post-American world” is the cliché du jour.

But Fallows comes to challenge, not embrace, this glum narrative. In a lengthy Atlantic essay, he notes that premonitions of American decline have recurred frequently in U.S. history – and have just as often been proved wrong. He admits to having contributed himself to the “Rising Sun” hype in the 1980s, when many observers worried that Japan would soon overtake the U.S. thanks to its superior production techniques and state-guided economic strategies.

Instead, Japan sank into a long period of stagnation. But if the “jeremiad tradition” is a poor predictor of the future, says Fallows, it has the salutary effect of spurring Americans to rise to new challenges and prove the doomsayers wrong.

He attributes American resilience and adaptiveness to our inventive, entrepreneurial culture, a welcoming immigration policy and first-rate system of higher education. What’s holding us back, however, is a hopelessly dysfunctional political system that has lost the capacity to deal effectively with big national problems.

“This is the American tragedy of the early 21^st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke,” he says. So far, so persuasive. But Fallows’ congenital optimism seems to fail him when the discussion turns to solutions. He’s no doubt realistic in dismissing great structural transformations, like a Constitutional convention to reorder our governing system, a parliamentary system or new rules that favor third parties. But concluding that “our only sane choice is to muddle through” under present arrangements ignores political reforms that are both powerful and attainable.

We could, for example, launch a frontal attack on Washington’s transactional culture and diminish the power of special interests by changing the way we finance Congressional elections. And rather than accept the inevitability of “rotten boroughs,” we could counter the worst abuses of gerrymandering by insisting that political districts be drawn by nonpartisan commissions charged with increasing rather than decreasing the number of competitive seats. We could also think seriously about addressing the abuse of the filibuster in the Senate, something that has sparked a great deal of commentary from progressives of late.

Such reforms would make it easier to overcome obstacles to the substantive changes that progressives favor, from affordable health coverage for all, to big investments in modern infrastructure and a new, low-carbon energy system. And where policy changes often expose philosophical cleavages and well as clashing interests within the Democratic coalition, fixing our broken political system is a cause that has the potential to unite all progressives.

Fallows has highlighted the right problem. But progressives should give high priority to fixing our broken politics as the prerequisite for renewing America.

First is this absolutely astounding poll from Public Policy Polling:

PPP’s newest national survey finds that a 52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately.

Wow. The mind reels.

Then there was this gem from House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) from yesterday, responding to the release of the Senate health reform bill: “What is even more alarming is that a monthly abortion premium will be charged of all enrollees in the government-run health plan.” That’s right – Boehner’s claiming that everyone in the public plan will be charged a monthly fee for abortions.

If that’s sounds a little fishy, that’s because it is. There is no such fee. In fact, the Senate bill requires insurance plans that offer abortion coverage to segregate their funds so tax money isn’t used to fund that coverage. The bill also states that every state’s health exchange must also offer one plan that doesn’t cover abortion. No consumer would be forced to fund abortions with their premiums. Not that the facts stop congressional Republicans these days.

And finally there was the bow heard round the world. Earlier this week, all conservatives could talk about was President Obama’s shocking bow to the Japanese emperor. Sean Linnane at Frum Forum, applying his expertise on bowing protocol, concluded that Obama “went WAY too low; it is only one step above a kow tow.” He added, “Compare Obama’s bow with how he conducted himself in the company of the Queen of England, and then contrast this with the way he leaned forward to bow and scrape before the King of Saudi Arabia; this certainly leaves a lot of room to wonder about which direction this man’s sentiments lie.”

That’s what conservatives have been reduced to: close textual readings of trivial moments. (And remember – this is from a conservative blog that’s supposed to be more moderate.) As if the right needed reminding of how out of step they are, a Fox News poll found that 67 percent of Americans approved of Obama’s bow — not that we needed a poll to underscore how inane the conservative obsession with the Obama bow is.

These reminders of the freak show on the right should remind progressives of what’s at stake. To put it simply: we are the only grown-ups in the room. We may be a fractious coalition, but the prospect of the other side coming back to power should be impetus enough to get us all to pull in the same direction.