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Six Things to Watch with Petraeus in Afghanistan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Now that Gen. McChrystal is about to add “(ret.)” after his name, let’s examine the implications of the transition to Gen. Petraeus.

The Washington Post story quotes an unnamed White House official saying of the transition: “It’s as seamless as it could be, not only in terms of operations but also because you put someone in who’s widely respected. No one is going to doubt that he’s the right guy for the job.”
A relatively smooth transition, to be sure, but with an emphasis on the relatively. Here’s a look at five areas where the change in command might create a bit of unease.

Political expectations: Petraeus is God, at least if you ask most elected officials on the Hill. Yes, he was the architect of the “surge” in Iraq, and the “surge” was part of the reason that violence decreased in that country. The massive increase in troops helped, but the strategy change, the Sons of Iraq’s change of allegiance and a six-month cease-fire called by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were all critical.

If you’re really interested in learning the entire story of how Iraq’s civil war was tamed, read The Gamble by Tom Ricks. In it, Ricks quotes a Petraeus colleague (and I’m paraphrasing from memory) as saying, “David is the best general in the United States military. But he’s not as good as he thinks he is.” It’s like Favre to the Vikings. He’s still really, really good. But he’ll never be as good as in Green Bay.

Keep this in mind because, as Ricks says on his blog this morning, “Afghanistan 2010 may be an even tougher nut than Iraq 2007. … Our biggest problem in Afghanistan is the government we are supporting there, and it isn’t clear to me what Petraeus can do about that.”

Mission: Counterinsurgency theory and practice is Petraeus’ bag, so don’t expect that to change. Bear in mind that COIN is a strategy, not an outcome. It ends with some sort of negotiated peace, and it’s unclear if Petraeus has the same threshold for potential discussions with the Taliban as McChrystal. There has been American resistance to the idea (as there should be) of reconciling with any of the Taliban’s upper eschelon, but would Petraeus draw the line slightly differently than McChrystal?

Relations with Eikenberry: It became clear that the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, was playing second fiddle to McChrystal, who had established a clear working relationship with Karzai. During Petraeus’ time in Iraq, he may have held more sway than then-Ambassador Ryan Crocker, but they were an inseparable team that appeared together constantly. Petraeus, who is as much of a diplomat as a solider, will work to forge a better relationship with Eikenberry and turn this operation into a true civilian-military effort.

Relations with Karzai: Karzai very publicly lobbied for McChrystal to stay, and by many accounts, the two were on the same page (at least professionally). Is it possible that they were too close? Will Petraeus do a better job using America’s isolated points of leverage to extract more from the Afghan government?

Relations with Pakistan: This quote says it all:

McChrystal also played a key role in improving Kabul’s rocky relationship with Islamabad.

Yet Petraeus probably has as much, if not more, clout in Islamabad. He was an early proponent of a regional strategy that prioritized improving relations with Pakistan in hopes of persuading it to target the Afghan Taliban fighters who use Pakistani hideouts to plot attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Petraeus has visited Pakistan numerous times, delivering assurances that the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan would not spill over into Pakistan, visiting Pakistani paramilitary forces in the northwestern city of Peshawar and regularly praising Pakistan’s fight against its domestic Taliban.

“There’s a complete understanding of each other’s situation,” a senior Pakistani military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “He’s not a stranger.”

Troops on the ground: There’s been no shortage of troops in Afghanistan who voiced their displeasure with McChrystal’s restrictions on the use of force. Think of it this way: you’re an 18-year-old Marine, –and you’ve become a trained killer and sent to a war zone. But your commanding general seems like he’s telling you not to do the job you’ve been trained for. Many of the troops’ quotes imply a certain amount of lost respect for McChrystal. Petraeus will have to work to explain the mission and win them over to a “mission first” mentality. Training stateside should also be adjusted accordingly.

Petraeus is the consummate pro, and he’ll no doubt do his best in an incredibly challenging environment with far-from-certain results. My take is that this transition will be as smooth as one could hope.

Photo credit: Jon-Phillip Sheridan’s Photostream

What No One Is Paying Attention to in the “Rolling Stone” Article

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The now-infamous Rolling Stone article that earned Gen. Stanley McChrystal a one-way trip out of Afghanistan has attracted attention for what it says about the White House.

And in a way, that’s a good thing.

Because once you get past the name-calling scandal, the article is really a takedown of counterinsurgency strategy and, by extension, a subtle get-out-of-Afghanistan-now message. In an attempt to categorize the debate about whether to adopt a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, here’s Hasting’s characterization:

COIN, as the theory is known, is the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military’s preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation’s government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve. The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps.

[…]

The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people,” says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. “The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.

Or this:

After several hours of haggling, McChrystal finally enlisted the aid of Afghanistan’s defense minister, who persuaded Karzai’s people to wake the president from his nap. This is one of the central flaws with McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy: The need to build a credible government puts us at the mercy of whatever tin-pot leader we’ve backed – a danger that Eikenberry explicitly warned about in his cable.

To sum up, you have a questionable description of COIN, followed by a single opinion from someone whose stated qualifications are that he went to college with McChrystal (who knows if Macgregor has any COIN expertise) deriding the entire concept.

It’s one thing to report on who McChrystal is, what he’s said, where he comes from, and the difficulty of mission he’s trying to accomplish. But it’s quite another to falsely characterize his mission as a Sisyphean task from the get-go. Clearly, the president, having consulted and deliberated for three months, believes that there’s significant reason to hope counterinsurgency can bring about hard-fought American security.

For a better discussion of COIN, I’d encourage you to read papers like this, by David Kilcullen, author of the Accidental Guerilla and an actual COIN expert. In the paper linked above, Kilcullen properly characterizes COIN as difficult and far from a guaranteed success, but forwards a thoughtful framework for how COIN practitioners might organize their efforts to bring about the best chances of sustainable security.

…you may now return to your regularly scheduled name-calling.

Photo credit: The US Army’s Photostream

Big Night For the Right in SC

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As I expected, the cluster of organizations and interests that represent the most conservative wing of the increasingly very conservative Republican Party had some real fun last night in South Carolina’s runoff elections.

Nikki Haley, the Mark Sanford protege who had staked out the “most conservative” territory in her gubernatorial race long before anything was said about her sex life or ethnicity, won the runoff over congressman Gresham Barrett by a two-to-one margin, essentially winning everywhere other than a few counties in Barrett’s upstate base. Similarly, another Sanford protege with a can’t-outconservative-me rep, state legislator Tim Scott, beat Charleston County Councilmember Paul Thurmond by better than two-to-one for an open congressional seat.

I’ve written enough about Haley over the past few weeks; suffice it to say that she won this race the moment her old staffer, blogger Will Folks, accused her of marital infidelity in a way that failed to convince much of anybody but made the entire campaign All About Nikki. And it was especially appropriate that Sarah Palin endorsed Haley just before the Folks furor began; the Haley saga was a pitch-perfect projection of Palin’s own persecution complex–you know, the Good Old Boys and the liberal lamestream media trying to smear a brave Mama Grizzly for telling the simple right-wing truth.

Scott’s victory was equally interesting, and perhaps an even bigger deal for the Republican Right, which will have an African-American spokesman in Congress for the first time since J.C. Watts retired. The symbolism of an African-American defeating the son of Strom Thurmond within shouting distance of Fort Sumter is obviously very striking. But it’s not as though Scott’s win repudiated any aspect of Thurmond’s legacy other than the blatant racism he abandoned by the 1970s; Scott was himself co-chairman of ol’ Strom’s last Senate campaign.

The third great event for South Carolina conservatives was the absolutely humiliating 71-29 defeat of U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis by Tea Party vehicle Trey Gowdy. This result will serve as an enduring reminder to GOP elected officials that The Movement will find someone to run against them if they stray from orthodoxy. Inglis’ fatal act of sacrilege was probably telling fist-shaking protestors at a town hall meeting to stop paying attention to Glenn Beck.

South Carolina has always been a special place for the more radical variety of conservatives. They certainly seemed to have the whole state wired last night.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: maryaustinphoto

Follow the Leader

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Congress isn’t always the first place you look for intellectually honest discussion of America’s fiscal dilemmas. Neither party has clean hands, yet each points smudged fingers at the other. How refreshing then to hear Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) uttering blunt truths rather than partisan cant about America’s exploding debts.

“Unfortunately, we can blame our long-term deficit on policies that are almost universally popular,” the House Majority Leader said yesterday at a forum hosted by Third Way. “We’re lying to ourselves and our children if we say we can maintain our current levels of entitlement spending, defense spending, and taxation without bankrupting the country,” he added.

Hoyer also wondered aloud about the wisdom of permanently extending any of the Bush tax cuts absent a serious plan for long-term deficit reduction. It’s a pertinent question for both Republican anti-tax zealots and President Obama.

Even as they excoriate Obama and the Democrats for ballooning the federal deficit, Republicans insist that all the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 be extended. That would cost a cool $3 trillion over the next decade, but don’t expect the GOP to fill that gaping hole in the federal budget with spending cuts. As Hoyer pointed out, Republicans have run like scalded dogs from Rep. Paul Ryan’s “roadmap” to a balanced budget, which calls for deep cuts in Medicare and Social Security.

But President Obama is in a bind as well. He has set up a fiscal commission to come up with a plan after the midterm election to start unwinding America’s massive debts. Many economists believe such a plan is essential to boost investor and lender confidence in the soundness of the U.S. economy, and to reverse the enormous imbalances in world financial flows.

During the 2008 campaign, however, Obama promised to extend the Bush cuts for the “middle class,” which he defined as families earning less than $250,000 and individuals earning less than $200,000. That promise helped him deflect GOP efforts to brand him as an inveterate tax hiker. But it carries a high price tag: about $1.4 trillion over the next decade according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

What’s more, the nation’s fiscal outlook has deteriorated dramatically since the campaign. Massive public spending to avert a financial and economic collapse last year could push this year’s deficit to a record $1.7 trillion. The national debt now stands at about $13 trillion, and is on course to reach 90 percent of GDP by 2020 – not far from Greek-style proportions.

America really can’t afford any of the Bush tax cuts right now. Letting them expire would give the fiscal commission more room to devise a balanced package of spending and tax reforms aimed at whittling down our debts.

But with unemployment stuck in the stratosphere, and with Democrats apparently facing sizable losses in the midterm election, it’s hard to ask them to expose middle-class families to higher taxes – especially when Republicans can be counted on to indulge in monolithic, over-the-top demagoguery.

GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted no time in unloading on Hoyer yesterday. “It’s now official. Top Democrats on Capitol Hill are starting to signal their intention to raise taxes on the middle class,” he declared on the Senate floor.

To limit the long-term fiscal impact, centrist Democrats like Hoyer are considering a temporary extension of the middle-class tax cuts. Many liberals, however, are more concerned about the supposed dangers of “austerity” than the nation’s colossal debt burden. In fact, they want to make the cuts permanent now, while Democrats still enjoy big majorities in both Houses.

So chances are Congress will extend the middle-class tax cuts this fall, setting a less-than-inspiring example of restraint for the fiscal commission.

Nonetheless, Hoyer said House Democrats are pushing a budget resolution that would limit discretionary spending; cut deeper than the president’s budget; reinforce PAYGO rules; and commit to a vote on the fiscal commission’s recommendations. It’s a modest down payment on fiscal reform that’s unlikely to suppress demand and throw the economy into a tailspin.

In any case, the contrast between Hoyer’s fiscal realism and the GOP’s denial couldn’t be sharper. Let’s hope Democrats follow their leader.

Photo credit: Center for American Progress Action Fund

That McChrystal Article

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Washington is abuzz this morning with news of an as-yet-unpublished Rolling Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. You can read the nastier bits here and here, but let’s just say that we learn that the general and his entourage have some not terribly complementary things to say about Obama, Biden, National Security Advisor Jim Jones, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke.

Though the full article isn’t out, leaks of the article make the attacks seem more personal rather than professional in nature, though I guess it’s likely that personal animosity is probably an extension of professional differences. And for those scoring at home, some of the attacks aren’t even that clever. No, I don’t think “Biden” sounds anywhere close to “Bite Me.”

The moral of this story is simple: Never, ever let your staff get trapped on a 12-hour bus ride between Paris and Berlin during a volcanic ash eruption with an all-access reporter. Duh. Michael Hastings, the freelance journalist who penned the piece, went on Morning Joe today and dropped that a lot of his material came from a European trip with McChrystal and co. that was extended and forced onto a bus thanks to Eyjafjallajokull (or as the military calls it, “E-15”). In such confined spaces and after such a stressful travel experience, people tend to get punchy and let things slip.

You’d expect that after such a flabbergasting news bomb, McChrystal’s staff would offer a “clarification” or denial or retraction or… something. But instead, there was an apology sent from McChrystal to reporters:

I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened. Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard. I have enormous respect and admiration for President Obama and his national security team, and for the civilian leaders and troops fighting this war and I remain committed to ensuring its successful outcome.

In other words: it’s all true.

McCrystal and his staff’s comments are certainly beyond the pale, and the profile continues to confirm erstwhile speculation that there are significant fissures within the U.S. team in Afghanistan. First, there was McChrystal’s interview with “60 Minutes” last September, where he dished on the Pentagon’s slow-response and his lack of contact with Obama. Then there was Ambassador Eikenberry’s leak of a strategy memo that resisted McChrystal’s call to increase troop levels. That’s on top of an eyebrow-raising speech in London that got him hauled onto Air Force One for a chat with the president. And now this.

Some are howling that this amounts to insubordination and that McChrystal should be fired. That may be true, and McChrystal is being reeled into D.C. tomorrow to explain himself. At the very least, it’s amazingly dumb public relations. You don’t get to be a flag officer in the U.S. military without being accustomed to the chain of command. And McChrystal and any loose-lipped staff should know that you keep your disagreements private and then execute the orders of the commander in chief. But who knows, maybe that’s not the way McChrystal, an ex-commander of the insular and secretive Special Ops, was used to conducting himself.

So what now? There is, of course, a very good possibility that this will be the end of the road. But that decision isn’t as easy as you might think. For one, Obama is not a knee-jerk politician who reacts instantly to every negative media report. He’s careful, deliberate and won’t be pressured.

Furthermore, this is an issue of national security, not petty politics. The president has to make decisions in the long-term interest of American safety and in consideration of the country’s sons and daughters in harm’s way. So, absent a ridiculous inability to keep things out of the press, changing an otherwise strategically competent theater commander in the midst of a major counterinsurgency campaign may not be the best thing to do at the moment. Obama has to thread the needle between team chemistry in Afghanistan and a PR nightmare to give both Afghanistan and the U.S. the best chances for long-term security.

And it’s with that in mind that any decision to replace McChrystal will be made.

Photo Credit: isafmedia

SC, Utah Runoffs Highlight Tuesday Primaries

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s primary day in Utah, with statewide primary runoffs on tap in North and South Carolina.

Taking these states in reverse order: South Carolina is almost certain to produce the bulk of national political headlines tonight, with the made-for-TV saga of Republican gubernatorial candidate (and certain boffo winner tonight) Nikki Haley front-and-center. In case you have somehow missed it, Haley is the very, very conservative state legislator who began the campaign as the underfunded protégé of disgraced “conservative reformer” Mark Sanford, and then vaulted into contention just as one and then two South Carolina Republican political operatives went public with allegations that they’d had illicit sex with the candidate.

It’s sometimes difficult to separate cause and effect in political developments, but it’s reasonably clear that the poorly documented sexual allegations against Haley, compounded more recently by crude attacks on her ethnicity (she’s second-generation Indian-American) and religion (she’s an adult convert to evangelical Protestantism from her family’s Sikh tradition), have immeasurably helped her campaign while reducing her once-powerful gubernatorial rivals to bystanders if not presumed accomplices in smears against her. Haley nearly won the nomination without a runoff, and was also endorsed by third-place finisher Attorney General Henry McMaster. Her opponent, Rep. Gresham Barrett, won the dubious prize of an endorsement from last-place primary finisher Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, and also managed to outspend Haley in the brief runoff campaign. But that matters little in a race driven by scandal-fed free media, and the only question is how high her margin will rise, and how well she wears on voters in a long general election campaign against Democrat Vincent Sheheen.

Those who want to boost the GOP as a party that presents diverse candidates proclaiming a single rigid conservative message will be hoping against hope that another South Carolina runoff, in the Low Country 1st congressional district, produces a win for state representative Tim Scott. Scott, who like Haley claims the “true conservative” mantle (and has both a Sarah Palin endorsement and Club for Growth backing), is African-American, and in a coincidence that could have been made in Hollywood, his runoff opponent is none other than Strom Thurmond’s son, Paul (a Charleston County council member).

Meanwhile, in upstate South Carolina, Republican Rep. Bob Inglis is expected to lose his House seat to Tea Party favorite Trey Gowdy; Inglis only won 28 percent of the vote in the primary to Gowdy’s 39 percent. Inglis got into trouble for voting for TARP and daring to criticize Glenn Beck.

In North Carolina, it’s anybody’s guess as to whether Elaine Marshall or Cal Cunningham will win the Democratic nomination to face Sen. Richard Burr. Marshall led the primary 37-26, narrowly missing the 40 percent threshold for winning the nomination outright. She also got an endorsement from third-place primary finisher Ken Lewis, which added to her strength among African-American leaders. But Cunningham, who was recruited into the race by the DCCC, has been the aggressor in the runoff, touting his electability.  The only public poll of the runoff, taken by PPP last month, showed the two dead even with a large undecided vote. I’d guess Marshall is still the favorite to win a very low-turnout runoff.

Aficionados of wild campaigns and wilder candidates may be disappointed tonight by the expected defeat of North Carolina Republican congressional candidate Tim D’Annunzio, who according to PPP is trailing Harold Johnson for the right to take on Democratic incumbent Larry Kissell.

With so much national attention on the Carolinas, the ideological drama going on in both parties in Utah may not receive due notice. As you may recall, Utah Republicans dumped Sen. Bob Bennett at a state convention last month as he trailed two challengers for the right to go to today’s primary. The survivors, entrepreneur Tim Bridgewater and former SCOTUS clerk Mike Lee, are both hard-core conservatives by most national standards. But Lee’s national supporters (including Jim DeMint and RedState’s Erick Erickson) are going after Bridgewater hammer-and-tong as little other than the ideological heir to Bennett (who, along with another defeated candidate, Eagle Forum activist Cherilyn Eagar, has endorsed Bridgewater). The one independent poll shows Bridgewater up by nine points, but Lee has released his own poll showing him up nine points.

Meanwhile, Utah’s sole Democratic congressman, Tim Matheson, is facing a serious primary challenge from the left, from retired teacher Claudia Wright. Wright has made Matheson’s opposition to health reform a major theme, and there’s also been talk of Republicans crossing over into the open Democratic primary to “take out” the incumbent (though as always, tactical voting is actually a pretty rare phenomenon). In a late poll, Matheson led Wright 52-33, but whatever vote Wright receives will be closely watched for national implications, given progressive grumbling about Blue Dogs like Matheson.

Among Industry, Surprising Support for a Carbon Price

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In meetings I’ve had recently with folks representing industries from automobiles to energy to private equity, I’ve heard it over and over again. They want a price on carbon.

They want it because they want to make money through alternative energy. For that, they need predictability in supporting the companies that take risks and need capital to design and develop alternative fuel technologies.

They want it because they, their children, their grandchildren, their employees and their shareholders, like everyone on the planet, will suffer the externalities of a carbon-dependent economy.

And they want it because they’re good corporate citizens, and they want to do their part in easing the nation toward a lower-carbon future.

The question is whether carbon pricing will get any traction in the coming weeks from a White House that seems more intent on political calibration than on shaping the landscape itself.

Given the dynamism of the carbon-pricing movement, the twin mysteries today are, first, why the president didn’t press harder for what seems to be the consensus, industry-friendly position on carbon — a simple pricing mechanism — in his Oval Office speech last week, and second, whether he will do so in the coming weeks.

The politics of carbon have changed dramatically in recent weeks, as the nation continues to watch the spill billow in the Gulf. (If you haven’t yet done it yourself on your computer, click here for BP’s own mesmerizing and terrifying live feed). A recent, post-BP poll found that 63 percent of Americans support a bill with a carbon price, while only 29 percent oppose it. The environment has also improved for proposals like the “cap-and-dividend” bill recently offered by Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) (and explained here on P-Fix by Danny Morris), which would price carbon with a net-neutral return to the taxpayers in the form of checks.

Meanwhile, the nation’s leading corporations continue to support a price on carbon. In April, before the spill, three of the nation’s largest oil companies — Shell, ConocoPhillips, and BP (this is even pre-oil spill) — as well as the Edison Electric Institute, a consortium of utilities whose members provide the bulk of the nation’s electricity, all announced their support for the Kerry-Lieberman legislation with a “hard price collar” for the price of carbon (including both a floor and a ceiling).

The fact is that many private corporations want a price on carbon. They want it because they believe the future is headed in a direction where carbon-producing technologies will simply have to be reduced, and they’d rather build their businesses around that future quickly rather than slowly.

However, there was no such leadership last week from the Oval Office. Of the transition from carbon, the president said:

There are costs associated with this transition. And some believe we can’t afford those costs right now. I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy — because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security and our environment are far greater. So I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party — as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels.

This clinical framing scarcely captures the urgency of the task. There is a golden opportunity now finally to get business and clean energy on the same page. The question is whether it will billow by and disperse, like the oil we’re all watching in the Gulf.

Photo credit: Michael Caven’s Photostream

Orszag a Tough Act to Follow

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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.

As the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Orszag played a key role in two of the biggest pieces of progressive legislation we’ll see in our lifetime: the economic stimulus package and the health care reform bill. On the latter, in particular, Orszag’s acumen and advocacy were key assets, his forceful case for the bill’s cost-cutting properties no doubt crucial in bolstering support for a gigantic piece of social legislation. It’s worth noting that his contributions to passing health reform began well before his stint at OMB. As the director of the Congressional Budget Office in 2007-2008, Orszag repeatedly sounded the alarm on rising health costs as the biggest threat to our fiscal future, warnings that undoubtedly helped set the stage for reform’s passage.

For an administration numbers-cruncher, he was unusually visible, which was a good thing. With a reputation for impartiality and brilliance, Orszag gave the administration’s agenda analytical ballast. There will no doubt be efforts on the right to brush Orszag with the red ink that the administration finds itself swimming in, but that’s politics as usual. Inheriting the worst economy since the 1930s, Orszag presided over the Herculean task of preventing a complete meltdown and setting the foundation for a recovery. In many ways, he’s a reflection of the administration at its best: a rigorous, pragmatic empiricist.

Photo credit: Center for American Progress’ Photostream

Lieberman’s Cyber Bill Causes Consternation Among Dems

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Late last week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) unveiled a draft bill that seems to be causing some anxiety among progressives.

Certain provisions in the bill seem to be reasonable – like creating a National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications and an Office for Cyber Policy — and should strengthen American defenses in an increasingly vulnerable climate (particularly as the China cyber threat is on the upswing). But others have split Democrats.

There seem to be three camps — civil libertarians, Democrats on the Hill working on the cyber issue and the White House.

Civil libertarians are concerned about this provision of the bill, which would provide the president with the power to declare a national cyber emergency and essentially compel owners of critical cyber infrastructure to subjugate themselves to the president’s direction. In other words, civil libertarians are making the case that with an emergency declaration, the president could close the Internet.

Lieberman has tried to explain the provision, saying “the government should never take over the Internet.” But his explaination fails to bridge the gap between a complete “taking over” and an ill-defined and vague emergency provision that his bill provides for.

But cyber-congressmen (a term I’m laying claim to) have come out in support of Lieberman’s bill:

In an unusual show of bipartisanship, two prominent senior members of the House panel — California Democrat Jane Harman and New York Republican Peter King — announced plans to co-sponsor and introduce a companion bill in the House to S. 3480, introduced last week by Senators Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.), Susan Collins (R.-Maine) and Tom Carper (D.-Del.).

“I agree with Mr. King that the Lieberman-Collins bill is excellent,” declared Harman, adding, “I do plan to co-sponsor the bill with him…I think it is an excellent effort. I’m sure it will change as it goes through the legislative process, but I do think it will be good to work with our counterparts in the Senate on this, as we worked with our counterparts in the Senate on the Safe Ports act.”

While supporting tough cyber legislation is certainly laudable, questions of motivation hang in the air. Is support for the bill born of a desire to seek genuine bipartisan compromise, an attempt to pass major legislation that members are responsible for in an election year, or because of the reported overtures to cyber-business? Or all three? Or something different?

Then there’s the White House. Deputy Under Secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate for the Department of Homeland Security (there’s a mouthful) Philip Reitinger testified that:

[T]he administration’s review of the bill, which was released last week, is incomplete and could not give a timeline on when this would be done. He mentioned that revisions of the bill should be aware that the president already has certain emergency powers and care should be taken to avoid overlapping the law.

As such, the bill was declined the Obama administration’s endorsement in the hearing. Instead, the deputy suggested that the current Section 706 of Communications Act should be used as a foundation for revisions in the law, as opposed to the creation of a new one.

That part in bold is the upshot — no matter what the support or concerns are, the bill won’t become law unless the administration fully supports it. At this point, that’s unlikely without significant revision.

Photo Credits: Tsakshaug’s Photostream

On Fiscal Reform, Can Pragmatists Trump Ideologues?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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.

But even the appearance of comity can’t hide the basic ideological differences between the two sides:

Cote emphasizes that economic growth is the key to fiscal stability, and Stern politely contends that it’s unrealistic to bank on economic growth alone as the solution. “There are some people who say, ‘Let’s grow our way out of it,’ ” Stern said. “Okay. Tell me how much growth we’re going to need? Has it ever happened before?”

The subtext of their exchange is clearly about the broader clash. Republicans warn that higher taxes will imperil economic growth and focus on the need for spending cuts. Democrats argue that some of the biggest GOP targets — safety-net programs — need to be protected and that deficits are too big to be closed without at least some tax increases.

That elemental difference looms in the background of any feel-good story of bipartisan agreement on fiscal reform. It would be tragic if the commission’s work and the administration’s efforts to forge a consensus on budget reform crash on the shoals of ideology. Everyone can agree that the country is on an unsustainable path. What everyone should also be able to agree on is the need for reform on both sides of the ledger. New streams of revenue need to be found. Entitlement reforms need to be made. And yet denial prevails over too many folks on both sides of the ideological divide.

Stern has a good record of reaching out to unlikely allies — see his work with Wal-Mart and the Business Roundtable on passing health care reform. But even his efforts might fail in the face of calcified dogmas and a lack of urgency among political and policy elites. How the commission’s efforts play out — it’s aiming to release its findings in December — will be one of the most compelling policy dramas in the coming months. Stay tuned.

Photo credit: Center for American Progress Action Fund

Haley Accuser Endorses…Haley; Tuesday Primaries in NC, Utah

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If you want a pretty good indication of the power of ideology in today’s Republican Party, check out the latest endorsement of front-runner Nikki Haley for the Republican gubernatorial nomination just before next Tuesday’s runoff:

So let’s get this straight … we know for a fact that S.C. Rep. Nikki Haley is lying through her teeth every time she denies our founding editor’s claim that she had an “inappropriate physical relationship” with him in the Spring of 2007. On top of that, we also know for a fact that her political career could very well go down in flames if (and more likely “when”) this ticking time bomb goes off …

And yet we’re endorsing her for the 2010 S.C. Republican gubernatorial nomination anyway?

Correct….

[T]he bottom line for S.C. taxpayers is that Haley would vote the right way on the S.C. Budget and Control Board, use her veto pen to reduce the size and scope of government and sign a universal parental choice bill which would (at long last) provide parents with real options and our flawed system with real, market-based accountability.

Yes, Haley has been endorsed by the web page of South Carolina blogger Will Folks, whose allegation of an affair with Haley turned the gubernatorial race upside down. Unless you buy the theory that Folks and Haley actually cooked up the whole J’accuse to preempt rumors about her sex life and make her a martyr, Folks’ endorsement looks like a powerful validator of the notion that being Right is more important than being right to today’s conservative activists.

There haven’t been any public polls on this race released since the June 8 primary, but a pre-primary poll by PPP that asked about a hypothetical Haley-Gresham Barrett runoff showed her up 51-35. This was before third-place finisher Henry McMaster endorsed Haley.

In North Carolina, where Democrats are having a Senate runoff on Tuesday, the only post-primary poll (again, by PPP) showed first-place primary finisher Elaine Marshall and DSCC favorite Cal Cunningham even at 36 percent with a large undecided vote. But that was more than a month ago, and given the likelihood of very low turnout, anything could happen. Marshall was endorsed by third-place finisher Ken Lewis, buttressing her advantage among African-Americans, and also by MoveOn.

And in Utah, whose primary is also on Tuesday, a poll taken for Mike Lee’s campaign showed him leading Tim Bridgewater in the Republican Senate race 39-30.  Bridgewater, a hard-core conservative but in better standing than Lee with the GOP establishment, has been endorsed by defeated incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett and also by fourth-place finisher Cherilyn Eager.

Poll Watch

In polling news, it’s a sign of the trouble that the long-time front-runner in the Florida Republican gubernatorial race, Bill McCollum, is experiencing with free-spending late-entering candidate Rick Scott that McCollum has released a poll showing them running dead even.

A new Sooner Poll of the Oklahoma Democratic gubernatorial race (the primary is on July 27) shows Attorney General Drew Edmondson holding just a one-point lead over Lt. Gov. Jari Askins.

Rasmussen has three new general-election gubernatorial polls out. In Texas, they show Rick Perry with a 48-40 lead over Bill White, although White has a somewhat better approval-disapproval ratio than the incumbent. In Tennessee, they show all three major Republican gubernatorial candidates with double-digit leads over Democrat Mike McWherter. And in Arkansas, Democratic incumbent Mike Beebe enjoys a 57-33 lead over Republican nominee Jim Keet, a slightly higher margin than he had in May.

Just Cops or Teachers, Too?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A debate among Republican gubernatorial candidates in Georgia this week illustrated just how far the GOP (particularly in the South) has drifted from the impulse that led George W. Bush and John McCain to support comprehensive immigration reform back in the day. Now it’s all about deporting the undocumented pronto, and the only difference of opinion is over how many public employees need to spend their time in the dragnet for illegals.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway, candidate Eric Johnson, who’s struggling to land a runoff spot, came out for requring both teachers and hospital employees to verify the citizenship status of their patrons. Candidate Nathal Deal professed frustration that few cops in Georgia viewed themselves as immigration enforcement officers, but did draw the line at teachers being enrolled in the chore.

All the GOP candidates, of course, supported the idea of Georgia enacting a law like Arizona’s; this is a position that’s becoming as much a litmus test for southern Republicans as attacking unions. That will become significant nationally in 2012 when the Republican presidential nomination contest moves south.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

“We Know the Kids Can Achieve”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The following is an excerpt from Rep. Jared Polis’s (D-CO) remarks at the PPI Capital Forum — Turnaround Schools: Rising to the Challenge:

Let me start by thanking the Progressive Policy Institute for their pioneering work, their work that led to the explosion of the charter school movement…as well as the support of PPI for education reform generally, which truly is a civil-rights issue. This is an issue of how does our society achieve equality, equality of opportunity, regardless of your race, your income bracket, your geography. The fact that you should have equality of free public education, regardless of your ZIP code, is the civil-rights issue and challenge for our current generation.

On the current blueprint for the administration: I’d give it an A-minus….If you’re asking me how to get it to an A, I would say, more of a focus on early childhood, as well as a focus on the continuum of early childhood all the way through higher education. And Colorado and other states are doing great things around access to higher education at the high-school level, moving to dual-enrollment options. I would love to see more of a federal emphasis on some of these programs that are successful on a state-by-state basis.

Two, I personally would like to see more explicit preservation and support for what had been done under No Child Left Behind with supplemental services and after-school programs, some of which have been proven effective, some of which haven’t been — but letting the data drive the process, in terms of making sure quality after-school programs are available in schools where the kids need it, be they provided by private providers or the school district itself.

…Personally, I would also like to see as much focus on career readiness as college readiness. I think that the plan gives short shrift to what we traditionally call vocational education in favor of college readiness, which, of course, is critical….But there is the reality that half of our kids or more will not necessarily be matriculating for a four-year university. Let’s look at what real, employable skills they can get from our public education system, even if those services are delivered by community colleges at our high school campuses or the kids are taking college courses while they’re there. Let’s look at that career-readiness piece at the same level as the college-readiness piece.

Kids really need to graduate and a diploma needs to mean both career and college readiness. They always put the career and college readiness piece in the verbiage, but really, everything below it is about college readiness, not career readiness. So that’s a personal issue that I would have….

Clearly, the turnaround area is one of the most topical and important areas. These provide a toolbox approach for capable and competent superintendents to take the reforms that they need at the schools that are persistently failing. Now, first of all, we need to acknowledge there is no excuse for a persistently failing school. People love to make excuses.

They say, well, they’re all – you know, none of them speak English or they’re all from poor communities or none of them have good home lives – and those are all very real challenges, and we all support a holistic approach to public policy. I think our health-care bill that the Congress recently passed will go a long way toward making sure that families from all economic background have the kinds of health care they need.

But again, we have seen models succeed with kids from diverse demographic backgrounds. We have seen schools in my district in Colorado, a charter school, Ricardo Flores Magon Academy, third-grade, 80 percent ESL, 90 percent free and reduced lunch, and yet, they reached 95 percent proficiency on the state test in reading and 100 percent proficiency in math. Again, you look at the demographics and you can say, why is this school succeeding, whereas another school that serves the exact same demographic – low-income, ESL, has almost, you know, the reverse, with only 10 to 15 percent of the kids proficient at grade level?

So no excuses. We know the kids can achieve. Let’s make sure that they have the opportunity to attend a school that allows them to fulfill their potential.

For a full transcript of the event, click here (PDF). For the video, click here.

So Much for Market Mechanisms

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If, as appears likely, cap-and-trade legislation is not going to be enacted this year or any other time soon, it represents more than a setback for the Obama administration (or for the environment). It’s also another blow to the high concept of using market mechanisms rather than direct government control to address major public policy challenges.

Cap-and-trade was originally designed, after all, as an alternative to command-and-control environmental regulations, which is why it was once championed by Republicans, particularly during and after its successful use in reducing acid rain in the 1990s.

But as the New York Times‘ David Leonhardt (with an exclamation point from Jonathan Chait) explained this week, Republicans have abandoned cap-and-trade just when it might be most useful, with some former advocates, ironically, embracing command-and-control:

[T]he great economic strength of market systems like cap and trade also happens to be their political weakness. They set prices and allow people to react. In the process, market systems acknowledge that reducing pollution may actually cost a little bit of money.Politicians don’t like to admit this, because voters don’t like it. Accepting higher costs is especially hard when the economy is weak. So Congressional Democrats have been repackaging their energy bills to make them look less and less market-oriented. Senator John McCain, who supported a permit system for carbon as the Republican presidential nominee, no longer does. Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, has reversed his position as well.

What does Mr. Graham now favor? A series of command-and-control regulations. He has introduced a bill with Senator Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, that would mandate specific standards for cars, trucks, homes and offices. It would also give the energy secretary the power to award loans to companies he thought could do a good job of setting up programs to retrofit buildings. State officials would do the same for factories. The bill, in short, puts more faith in government than the market.

Leonhardt clearly believes that the transparency of cap-and-trade when it comes to costs is its major political flaw. That’s definitely a factor, but I’d argue that something more fundamental is going on. Once Democrats embraced cap-and-trade, Republicans began retreating from it as a simple matter of politics. And this distancing effort has been immensely reinforced by the rightward trend in the GOP during the last few years, in which leaders who simply denied there was any climate change problem, and/or that government had any useful role to play on the issue, have been in the ascendancy. So “cap-and-tax” was demonized and essentially placed off-limits for Republican politicians, to the point where those like Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) who weren’t quite in the “denialist” camp found it easier to just support direct federal regulation.

We saw a similar dynamic play out on health reform, where a market-based managed competition model long supported by Republicans, and championed quite recently by Mitt Romney, became toxic the moment it was fully advanced by Barack Obama. And even as they savaged ObamaCare as “socialized medicine,” Republicans saw little irony in posing as last-ditch defenders of Medicare, a relic of an earlier Democratic drive for a government-run single-payer system.

On both health care and climate change, it’s not surprising that many progressives are impatient with Obama’s determination to promote market-based approaches that the supposed party of market-based policy, the GOP, will no longer support. But nobody should for a moment mistake the identity of the prime mover in shifting the political ground away from the once-promising “centrist” convergence on using market mechanisms to address public sector challenges. The GOP could have declared partial victory and celebrated the Democratic Party’s abandonment of big government solutions, and then fought it out over the details. Instead, Republicans have burned down every structure on the potential common ground that Americans seem to crave. They may be able to succeed for a while in opportunistically deploring the inability of Democrats to get anything done. But if and when Republicans regain power, they may well discover that the GOP policy arsenal has been emptied by their own hands.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: Magnera

A Talking Head Dishes on Fox’s Fair and Balanced Farce

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Jim Arkedis on Fox NewsEvery so often, I’ll get a call from someone over at Fox News to appear as a talking head.

Now, before you scream out a collective “EEEEWWW! GROSS!” let me explain. I work at a smallish think tank, and as the old saying goes, any publicity is good publicity. My connection to Fox was established through a good friend (and conscientious journalist) who works on Fox News Sunday. He introduced me to a handful of other bookers, all of whom have been very courteous, friendly and genuinely appreciative of my contributions.

This started just over a year ago, and I’d estimate that Fox offers me a slot as a talking head on national security issues (oh, and on pirates. Fox LOVES pirate stories) perhaps once every two weeks. Due to scheduling conflicts and the last-minute nature of many of the requests (it’s not unusual to get a 9:00 a.m. call for a 10:30 a.m. appearance), I can do only perhaps half of them. (Click here to see a clip of me talking with none other than Geraldo Rivera [best line from Geraldo, “I agree with Jim”], or here to see me drop some knowledge on an “expert” from the Heritage Foundation [whom several of my friends suggested I ask out. I demurred].)

In the beginning, I was just really happy to get on TV. Call it narcissistic, call it what you will, but I was generally under the impression that I was providing Fox’s viewers with an alternate viewpoint. I understood that “Fair and Balanced” was a joke, but I always believed that I might be able to connect with a small percentage of the ardently conservative audience and give them some honest food for thought. When the White House froze out Fox a few months ago, I thought it was a bad move to all but give up on reaching a large percentage of the news-viewing public. (The White House has since backed down from that stance.) It’s from that perspective that I’ve been engaging Fox. But over the last few times I’ve gone on, I’ve come to realize that in some circumstances, it’s a futile effort.

Just yesterday, I received a request to discuss this op-ed from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). In the article, Lieberman dings the Obama administration’s recently released National Security Strategy because it uses the term “violent extremism” to define one of America’s enemies, rather than “violent Islamic extremism.” Lieberman took the omission of one word and turned it into an entire opinion piece.

Here’s where we run into problems. I am happy to go on Fox and discuss the big issues of the day when we’re starting from a neutral position. If the topic is “Let’s discuss Obama’s national security strategy,” that’s fine. But this time, the point of departure was, “Joe Lieberman, who’s a credible voice on national security to Fox’s viewership, says Obama’s national security strategy sucks. Jim, it’s your job to explain why it doesn’t suck.”

That’s a fairly clear illustration of Fox’s m.o. Instead of having an honest debate, Fox chooses an angle on a story (i.e., Lieberman’s critique of the National Security Strategy) that establishes a frame for the discussion. Those frames, more often than not, will have the progressive on the defensive from the start. But by having a progressive on TV, Fox can claim to be “fair and balanced.”

When I objected on these grounds, my Fox booker, whom I like a lot, reiterated that going on TV still provided me the opportunity to get my viewpoint out there. I replied that the interview was framed in such a way that did not allow their audience to be persuaded – and yet my appearance would validate their claim to be fair and balanced. I closed by saying,  “[I]f there are big issues framed from a neutral point of view, I love to talk about them. I just don’t want to be the punching bag on pre-determined outcome.”

So how did the slot I refused to go on turn out? Click here and see for yourself — they only had one guest, from the center-right Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Consider that my little contribution to unfair and unbalanced.