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The EPA and GHGs: Sometimes the Little Things Matter Most

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Major pieces of legislation from the Hill, blockbuster rulemakings, and Supreme Court cases get all the policy headlines. Sometimes, though, small things can make just as much of an impact. Last week’s completion by the EPA of a proposed revision to an internal memo — the Johnson Memorandum — could be an example of this, though it looks like it will be most notable for maintaining the status quo. Still, it’s interesting to look at what impact it could have made (and may yet, if the final version is different).

The memo and today’s revision have to do with a bit of Clean Air Act (CAA) arcana: which polluters have to get preconstruction permits to build new plants or modify existing ones? This question seems superficially to be interesting to only the most pedantic of CAA wonks, but the answer has real effects for the cost and effectiveness of policy.

These permits are a big deal. They are expensive and time-consuming to get and require facilities to install the “best available control technology” (BACT). Since the EPA will very shortly regulate greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions, the question has pressing relevance. The EPA’s controversial “tailoring rule” is aimed at minimizing the impact of these permit requirements (called PSD in CAA lingo) by restricting them initially to larger sources. But the even more immediate question of when those large sources have to get permits is determined elsewhere in the Johnson Memo. (For more on how these pieces fit together, see the chart here.)

The EPA has traditionally required only emitters of pollutants subject to actual control under the CAA to get PSD permits. This means that emitters of pollutants that are only reported, not regulated, don’t have to get permits. It also means that emitters don’t have to get permits until regulation actually forces action; regulation just being announced isn’t enough. The Johnson Memo, released in 2008 by the Bush-era EPA and named for then-EPA Administrator Steven Johnson, confirmed this traditional approach.

Now that the EPA is about to regulate GHGs, the agency is reopening this issue. If you thought that the 19-page Johnson Memo was a comprehensive treatment, get ready for the 77-page reconsideration. In the proposed version of reconsideration (released last year), the EPA claims its preferred option is to stick with the traditional approach. This would probably result in permit requirements for GHGs beginning in January 2011, according to Administrator Lisa Jackson’s letter to Congress last week. But the proposed reconsideration mentions alternatives, such as a permit requirement when an endangerment finding for a pollutant is made, or even when reporting is required. If one of these options is chosen by the EPA in the final reconsideration, emitters will require permits now (since GHGs are subject to reporting in 2010 and an endangerment finding was made in December).

As Jeff Holmstead of Bracewell & Giuliani discussed at RFF’s Clean Air Act event last week, this timing issue really matters for emitters. If an emitter has a new plant or modification awaiting a permit, whether a permit application is processed before or after GHGs become part of the BACT inquiry is very important. Uncertainty makes planning difficult. Combined with the uncertainty surrounding the tailoring rule, GHG emitters are unsettled and unhappy. Unsettled and unhappy industries tend to sue agencies and lobby Congress. Environmentalists also care about timing. They want GHGs to be a part of the permit process as soon as possible, and are likely to exert pressure of their own.

Since the Johnson Memo and the new reconsideration of it are EPA interpretations of its own statutes, they are very hard to challenge in court (they are entitled to Chevron deference). This makes pressure on the agency directly (through the comment process) or indirectly (through Congress) the most likely avenues of attack from either side.

Since the proposed reconsideration confirms the existing approach, I think it will be relatively unchanged in its final form. If the EPA does pursue a change in this policy, however, the effects will be large. This is just one of countless illustrations of how, in Washington as much as anywhere, the little things matter.

This item is cross-posted at Weathervane.

More On ObamaCare/RomneyCare

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Here’s something to tuck away in your files on both health care reform and 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, from Tim Noah at Slate (via Jon Chait). Looking at Romney’s new pre-campaign book, Noah observes:

Romney’s discussion of health reform is, from a partisan perspective, comically off-message. (How could he know what today’s GOP message would be? He probably finished writing the book months ago.) Remove a little anti-Obama boilerplate and Romney’s views become indistinguishable from the president’s. They even rely on the same MIT economist! At the Massachusetts bill’s signing ceremony, Romney relates in his book, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., quipped, “When Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy are celebrating the same piece of legislation, it means only one thing: One of us didn’t read it.”

Noah goes on to mix up some Obama and Romney quotes on health care reform, and challenges the reader to say which is which. Can’t be done.

Back in January, I predicted that Romney’s sponsorship of health care reform in Massachusetts might turn out to be a disabling handicap in a 2012 presidential race, given the shrillnesss of conservative rhetoric about features in Obama’s proposal that are also in Romney’s–most notably, the individual mandate.

Something happened since then, of course, which has been of great value to Romney in protecting his highly vulnerable flank on health reform: Scott Brown, another supporter of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, became the maximum national GOP hero and set off to Washington to try to wreck Obama’s plans. That meant that not one, but two major Republican pols would be promoting ludicrous distinctions between RomneyCare and ObamaCare as though they were actually vast and principled.

But I can’t see this illogical brush-off as working forever. If the Mittster does crank up another presidential campaign, fresh media attention will be devoted to his record and “philosophy” on health care. And more importantly, Romney’s rivals in a presidential race won’t for a moment give him a mulligan on the issue the GOP has defined as all-important. Mitt’s “socialism” in Massachusetts will eventually re-emerge as a big, big problem for him, and arguments that it was just state-level “socialism” won’t quite cut it in a Republican Party that’s moved well to the Right since the last time he ran for president. Before it’s over, they’ll make it sound like he’s the reincarnation of Nelson Rockefeller, money and all.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/newshour/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: A Pragmatic Progressive Argument for Repeal

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In the 1990’s, pragmatic progressives led the way in reinventing government. Under the leadership of President Clinton, wasteful spending was cut from the federal budget and new cost-effective strategies were implemented that reduced inefficiencies. However, for all our achievements in the ‘90’s, some of the reforms enacted during those years were less than successful. Today, pragmatic progressives must own up to past mistakes and propose fixes to outdated, ineffective and costly policies. Among those failed reforms is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT).

Mandated by Congress in the 1994 Defense Authorization Act and signed into law by President Clinton, the DADT policy targets for expulsion from the armed services those who have a propensity for, display behavior associated with, or commit acts of homosexuality. It’s important to note that DADT prevented baseless initiation of investigation into a service member’s orientation, which the military’s former policy allowed, and was, in fact, the compromise policy that emerged from President Clinton’s original proposal to allow gays to serve openly in the military.

Opinions and conjecture aside about this compromise in 1993, DADT is plainly in need of repeal now — and support for such a move is rock solid. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and former Secretary of State General Colin Powell have recently joined other active and retired high-ranking military and Defense Department officials in calling for its end.

The support for repeal among military brass underscores the pragmatic value of doing away with the policy. For one thing, the policy has inarguably done harm to our national security efforts. Under DADT, almost 800 “mission-critical” troops have been discharged in the last five years, including at least 59 Arabic and nine Farsi linguists. These unnecessary discharges create additional challenges and risks for our brave young men and women on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition, our military continues to face an overall recruiting crisis. DADT unnecessarily limits the pool of potential recruits, including some of the best and brightest young minds we need to win the war on terror and run our military in the decades to come. According to recent estimates, some 4,000 service members each year choose not to re-enlist because of the policy, and 41,000 gay and bisexual men might choose to enlist or re-enlist if the policy were repealed.

Under DADT, more than 13,500 gay soldiers have lost their jobs and medical, educational and other benefits. Many of those discharged are young Americans who enrolled with the promise of a college education and a better life. Others given the boot have served for decades and have lost more than a job — their entire careers have been wiped out, too, because of their sexual orientation.

And then there’s the financial downside of the policy. It costs up to $43,000 to replace a discharged service member. Add at least $150,000 more to that figure for officers and $1,000,000 for Navy and Air Force pilots. If you consider inflation and the cost of additional required training for service members to fight the war on terror, you can imagine the average price tag on this policy has increased — and will continue to increase — significantly over time.

With 75 percent of Americans, including 64 percent of Republicans, calling for an end to DADT, the political risk to overturning this policy is minimal. In fact, when one considers the size of the pro-equality voting bloc, which includes an overwhelming majority of young Americans, one could argue the benefits greatly outweigh the costs of action on this reform.

Rather than approaching DADT as strictly a cultural or social issue — which is how our conservative opposition would like to define it to inject homophobia in the debate and divide Americans — progressives should also frame DADT as a matter of national security, civil service and fiscal responsibility. Taking up this policy challenge under these terms would reflect our progressive values and “third way” approach — to cut wasteful government spending, focus our national security to fight global terrorism and the wars of the 21st century, reduce unemployment and reward work, and promote national service.

Democracy, Iraq-Style

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Everyone knows that America’s attempt to implant democracy in Iraq was a fool’s errand. Everyone, that is, but the Iraqi people.

Stubbornly defying terrorist bombings and official incompetence, they turned out in force to vote in national elections over the weekend. Although the outcome isn’t yet known, the elections confirmed Iraq’s status as the Middle East’s most important, if precarious, experiment in democracy.

The process hasn’t been pretty, but there’s no denying that something like a normal, pluralistic politics is emerging in a society brutalized by a sadistic tyrant and scarred by the sectarian violence that followed the U.S. invasion. The big question now is whether Iraqis will continue along the path of power-sharing and representative government, or give up on democracy and opt for some form of authoritarian rule, which is the norm in their neighborhood.

It’s easy to be pessimistic about Iraq, so let’s start with the positive side of the ledger. First, al Qaeda has been defeated. Though it still perpetrates atrocities against Iraqi civilians, it has scant popular support and cannot stand up to Iraq’s army and police. Sectarian strife also has subsided, at least for the moment; the Economist reports that civilian casualties are at a six-year low.

Second, politics is becoming less sectarian as communal groups splinter and forge cross-cutting alliances. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has broken with the main Shia groups, which failed to field their own candidate for his post. Also expected to do well is former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a nationalist whose coalition includes Shia and Sunnis. In the north, a reform movement called “Change” has broken with the two dominant Kurdish parties on the issue of local political corruption. And in pointed contrast to Iran, Iraq’s Shia clerical establishment stays out of politics.

On the other side of the ledger, Iraq’s emerging political order faces several enormous challenges. One is a fatal combination of governmental weakness and corruption. The central government still cannot supply basic infrastructure, including electricity. Rampant bribery and cronyism are giving democracy a bad name and feeding popular sentiment for strongman rule. It’s not hard to imagine Iraq moving toward a “soft authoritarianism” like Egypt’s or perhaps the even more stifling models of Syria or Saudi Arabia.

The Iraqi economy is in shambles. Unemployment is pervasive and private industry is weak; government is the employer of first and last resort in Iraq. Although the country has enormous oil reserves, there’s a real danger it could use them to foster dependence on state subsidies rather than private sector work.

Finally, there’s the question of what happens when U.S. troops are no longer around to backstop Iraq’s political evolution. Under the Status of Forces Agreement signed by the Bush administration and Baghdad, all U.S. forces must be out by the end of 2011. As Peter Beinart warns, this deadline may not allow enough time for the consolidation of democracy in Iraq. The United States plays a quiet but vital role in mediating sectarian conflicts and helping Iraqis set up nonpartisan governing institutions. In our absence, civil war could flare up again, Iran might escalate its internal interference in Iraqi affairs, or there could be a military coup in reaction to public anger over the chaos and incompetence of civilian government.

Of course, the United States cannot unilaterally change the Status of Forces Agreement. But Obama should be vigilant and open to a request from the Iraqi government to do so should that become necessary. We have come too far, at enormous expense to both Iraqis and Americans, to give up now on Iraq’s struggles to build a decent government that rules by popular consent.

NY Lost at the Oscars Last Night

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

“So did you watch the Oscars last night?”

You probably heard that question at least 20 times around the water cooler this morning, and followed it up debating the merits of Avatar vs. The Hurt Locker or Jeff Bridges (who will always be “The Dude” to me) vs. Colin Firth…unless you were one of three million households in New York City, in which case you were fuming that Cablevision and ABC conspired to keep the Academy Awards off your TV screen. In a last-ditch effort to not alienate all their viewers, the two companies — which had allowed ABC service to Cablevision subscribers to expire at midnight the night before the Oscars — got ABC back on Cablevision under an “agreement in principle” about the time Christoph Waltz was accepting the best supporting actor award.

How two of the largest entertainment companies in the country (ABC you know; Cablevision, in addition to being the nation’s fifth largest cable company, owns Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall) could work together to keep the biggest night in entertainment from viewers would seem to boggle the mind.

Cable operators provide local terrestrial broadcast stations over their cable systems under a “must carry” rule, paying carriage fees to provide free-to-air local channels. This arrangement — a leftover from the birth of the cable era in the 1980s — is how you can get your local affiliate on your cable box. But now that “everyone” has cable (87 percent of households in the U.S. subscribe to satellite or cable), terrestrial providers have noticed that they could be charging cable providers for as much as they are paying for the Home Shopping Network. Needless to say, while cable providers want rates to reflect what they feel is the cost of providing a free-to-air channel, local stations want to have the special relationship they have with viewers priced into their carriage fees.

With the conversion of free-to-air analog signal to digital broadcast TV — indistinguishable in quality from the basic cable signal — the stakes seem to have gotten higher. The first shots in this particular war rang out among the New Year’s fireworks, when Fox Television and Time Warner Cable came to a last-minute agreement on providing Fox TV (and the bowl games it broadcast) to 13 million Time Warner subscribers. Fox was looking to get one dollar per subscriber from Time Warner, while the cable provider hoped to continue paying in the neighborhood of the existing nickel-per-customer fee structure.

As local broadcasters are a patchwork across the country, their carriage fee agreements come up for renewal on an irregular basis. The game of chicken was played again this past week between ABC and Cablevision — and with no agreement and neither side blinking, the cars crashed. New York area Cablevision viewers were the losers, though I’m sure Time Warner subscribers and local bars were very popular last night.

The impasse raised the attention of Sen. John Kerry and the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet — who unsurprisingly thought this was as head-slappingly bad an idea as the rest of us — but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has jurisdiction over the issue. FCC media bureau chief William Lake emailed a tepid statement yesterday urging “both parties to quickly reach a resolution for the benefit of viewers.” Rather than taking a passive role with service providers, content providers, and consumers, the FCC should have taken a proactive role in this issue. The goal should have been to keep the players involved from grandstanding in an attempt to gain an undue advantage, and bring them both to the table in search of a solution beneficial to both parties and — most importantly — us viewers.

On the Right Nuclear Weapons Track

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The following is an excerpt from Will Marshall’s op-ed published today in AolNews.com:

President Barack Obama has resumed a vital post-Cold War chore interrupted by his predecessor — reducing America’s nuclear arsenal. The White House reportedly is putting the final touches on its Nuclear Posture Review, which aims to reinforce the world’s nonproliferation regime without undercutting deterrence.

The new strategy reverses the Strangelovian course pursued by George W. Bush during the heyday of conservative infatuation with unilateralism and pre-emptive strikes. For example, rather than build on the momentum of previous arms-reductions efforts, Bush funded research on a new line of nuclear weapons — “bunker-busters” — intended to take out underground nuclear facilities or command centers.

Under Obama’s strategy, America will develop no new nuclear arms. Instead, Obama is contemplating a new system, called “Prompt Global Strike,” that would enable the United States to hit targets anywhere with non-nuclear weapons. And where Bush rejected the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban as an infringement on U.S. sovereignty, Obama, who backs the treaty, will invest in efforts by U.S. weapons laboratories to ensure the reliability of a smaller stockpile.

Expect conservatives to attack these changes as fresh proof of Obama’s “naïve” quest for a world without nuclear weapons — a vision he offered in his first address to the United Nations in September. The right found an improbable ally in French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who reproved Obama for dreaming while rogue states like Iran and North Korea are bent on expanding the nuclear club.

But Obama’s critics don’t explain how the United States can stem the spread of nuclear arms by holding on to many more than we need. Russia also wants to get rid of its superfluous nukes, which is why it’s been pressing Washington for a new arms-reduction treaty. What’s more, under the 1965 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the nuclear powers are obliged to reduce their nuclear stockpiles in return for agreement by nuclear “have-nots” to forgo building nuclear weapons.

Read the full column at AolNews.com.

The Iraqi Election You Haven’t Heard About

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Iraq is having a major election on Sunday. No way, really? Yup, really. The leader of the winning coalition gets to be prime minister even. Suffice it to say, I’m pretty sure this one has slipped under the radar for most Americans. My quick and informal poll of friends — “Are you aware that Iraq is going to elect a new prime minister on Sunday?” — drew a mix of blank stares and disbelief. Gone are the days of George W. Bush’s PR blitz, where the ex-prez’s attempts to build public support for his war hung on selling the country on wistfully wrapped, grandiose concepts of liberty and freedom.

This time around, the Obama administration has opted for a more low-key approach. Democracies aren’t built overnight, a lesson the Bush folks probably knew, but since they had staked so much political capital to a quick victory and transition in Iraq, they couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The reality is that this election is more important than the last one, and the next one will be more important than this weekend’s. The mere act of holding elections is of course highly significant, but they must continually confirm the growth and strength of state institutions to truly build a democracy. That’s what this election is really about — how stable is Iraq?

So who’s going to win, and what issues are Iraqis concerned with? Man, if I could answer either of those with granularity, I could probably figure out how to make a lot of money with it. For starters, click here for a guide to all the different coalitions. Current polling predicts that incumbent PM Nouri al-Maliki’s coalition will win 30 percent of parliamentary seats, ex-PM Ayad Allawi’s (a Shia, running with a Sunni and secular Shia on a national unity coaition) bloc will take 22 percent, and the Iraqi National Alliance (a conservative Shia group) will get 17. But this doesn’t necessarily determine the “winner” because all the main groups will have to form a governing majority by reaching out to some of the millions of minority blocs in a coalition-of-the-coalitions government. In other words, Allawi might become prime minister if he can form a bigger coalition alliance with a few critical minority groups.

“Issues” in Iraq don’t carry — at least for now — the same weight and implications they do as in Western democratic politics. Iraqis aren’t going to bicker about abortion language in a health care bill in Baghdad, for example. Rather, Iraqi politicians are still debating the first two levels on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and wants: basic security, public services, and the like.

Which is why incumbent PM Nouri al-Maliki has named his coalition “State of Law,” which is of course designed to appeal to those who desire security. It’s also why there has been an uptick in attacks across Iraq over the last few months, as various groups try to disprove al-Maliki’s claim that he has the upper hand in the security situation.

I think we’ll really know how far Iraqi democracy has come based on sectarian voting patterns. Are Shias just voting for other Shias? Sunnis for Sunnis? Kurds for Kurds? We’ll know that democracy has really come to Iraq when a Shia will vote for a Sunni based on issues, not patronage. But since the issues are still so rudimentary, sectarianism still probably carries the day.

Finally, the post-election period will be the most critical. How easy will it be to form a governing majority? Will there be a peaceful transfer of power? How bad is sectarian violence? These questions all hinge on one another, I’m afraid. There may be calls for the U.S. to extend its presence in Iraq if the post-election period is really messy. But as I’ve written here, that’s a lot tougher than it might seem.

So pay attention, America — Iraq still deserves your attention.

Pro-Reform Majority?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

With Republicans beating the drums incessantly for the proposition that “the American people have rejected health care reform,” it’s probably not a bad time to recall the discussion that broke out late last year over evidence that many people saying they oppose specific proposals do so because they want to take reform much farther.

Exhibit A was an Ipsos-McClatchy poll taken in November. Here was Nate Silver’s take on it:

Ipsos/McClatchy put out a health care poll two weeks ago. The topline results were nothing special: 34 percent favored “the health care reform proposals presently being discussed”, versus 46 percent opposed, and 20 percent undecided. The negative-12 net score is roughly in line with the average of other polls, although the Ipsos poll shows a higher number of undecideds than most others.Ipsos, however, did something that no other pollster has done. They asked the people who opposed the bill why they opposed it: because they are opposed to health care reform and thought the bill went too far? Or because they support health care reform but thought the bill didn’t go far enough?

It turns out that a significant minority of about 25 percent of the people who opposed the plan — or about 12 of the overall sample — did so from the left; they thought the plan didn’t go far enough.

Well, Ipsos-McClatchey is back with another poll, and it’s shows an even stronger percentage of reform “opponents” thinking current bills don’t go far enough: more than a third of the 47% of respondents opposing “the reforms being discussed” say it’s because “they don’t go far enough.” Added to the 41% of respondents who say they support “the reforms being discussed,” that’s a pretty significant majority favoring strong government action to reform the health care system.

If that’s right, then maybe a majority of Americans technically favor a “no” vote on health care reform. But it’s not at all clear that they’ll be any happier with a perpetuation of the status quo, much less the kind of “reforms” Republicans are talking about. It looks like a significant share of the public wants something with a strong public option, or perhaps a full-blown single-payer system. It’s disengenuous to pretend these are people who have linked arms with Rush Limbaugh and congressional Republican leaders to fight against serious reform.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

The Tea Party’s Retreaded Ideas

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

For all the talk about the Tea Party Movement and its demands that America’s political system be turned upside down, it’s always been a bit hard to get a fix on what, exactly, these conservative activists want Washington to do.

To solve this puzzle, it’s worth taking a look at the Contract From America process — a project of the Tea Party Patriot organization, designed to create a bottoms-up, open-source agenda that activists can embrace when they gather for their next big moment in the national media sun on April 15. The 21-point agenda laid out for Tea Partiers to refine into a 10-point “Contract” is, to put it mildly, a major Blast from the Past, featuring conservative Republican chestnuts dating back decades.

There’s term limits, naturally. There are a couple of “transparency” proposals, such as publication of bill texts well before votes. But more prominent are fiscal “ideas” very long in the tooth. You got a balanced budget constitutional amendment, which ain’t happening and won’t work. You got fair tax/flat tax, the highly regressive concept flogged for many years by a few talk radio wonks, that has never been taken seriously even among congressional Republicans. You’ve got Social Security and Medicare privatization (last tried by George W. Bush in 2005) and education vouchers. You’ve got scrapping all federal regulations, preempting state and local regulations, and maybe abolishing some federal departments (an idea last promoted by congressional Republicans in 1995). You’ve got abolition of the “death tax” (i.e., the tax on very large inheritances). And you’ve got federal spending caps, which won’t actually roll back federal spending because they can’t be applied to entitlements.

My favorite on the list is a proposal that in Congress “each bill…identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.” This illustrates the obliviousness or hostility of Tea Partiers to the long string of Supreme Court decisions, dating back to the 1930s, that give Congress broad policymaking powers under the 14th Amendment and the Spending and Commerce Clauses. This illustrates the literalism of Tea Party “original intent” views of the Constitution; if wasn’t spelled out explicitly by the Founders it’s unconstitutional.

We are often told that the Tea Party Movement represents some sort of disenfranchised “radical middle” in America that rejects both major parties’ inability to get together and solve problems. As the “Contract From America” shows, that’s totally wrong. At least when it comes to policy proposals, these folks are the hard-right wing of the Republican Party, upset that Barry Goldwater’s agenda from 1964 has never been implemented.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bisongirl/ / CC BY 2.0

A Heavy Lift

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

We always knew it would be a heavy lift. When Scott Brown swept away the filibuster-proof majority in the Senate – by taking Ted Kennedy’s seat no less – it seemed like a puckish and malevolent act by the legislative gods. Now, as the endgame draws near, the degree of difficulty only continues to go up.

The problem this time is not the Senate but the House. The plan is for the House to pass the bill that the Senate passed, and for both chambers to then pass a “fix” via reconciliation, which would require only a majority in the Senate.

But since the beginning of the year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has lost several “yes” votes on health care. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a liberal stalwart, resigned January 3; Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) passed away February 8; Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) stepped down on February 28. On top of that, Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA), the only Republican in either chamber to vote for reform, has come out and said he would not be voting for the bill this time around. Add on the Stupak bloc, the group of representatives led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) who reject the Senate bill on the grounds that its anti-abortion provisions are less strict than in the bill the House passed, and the bill’s prospects become even dimmer.

Just today, more bad news. Initially, with all the departures from the House, including that of Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA), the magic number for Pelosi had at least shrunk to 216. But Deal today said he would stick around until the vote, raising the threshold to 217 again. But there’s more! There have been reports of other previous “yes” votes now wavering as the GOP ramps up its anti-health reform campaign to “spook” Dems: Rep. Shelley Berkley (NV), Rep. Michael Arcuri (NY), Rep. Kurt Schrader (OR).

But anyone expecting less than a full-on blitzkrieg from the right to sway quaking Dems has not been paying attention. The question is: Does that include the White House?

Too Much Inside Baseball

One of the ironies of health reform legislation has been its declining popularity with the public even as it progressed up the legislative chain. As it passed each new congressional hurdle, public opinion dipped. By the time 2010 rolled around (and before Scott Brown), health reform was on the brink of passing, but the victory seemed like it wouldn’t be quite the rout its supporters had hoped, with the bill so damaged in the public’s eyes.

I always thought that this was the result of an overcorrection on the White House’s part from the mistakes of the Clinton administration. The Clinton health care plan floundered because the administration was so ham-handed when it came to dealing with Congress. This White House adjusted accordingly, and played the beltway game to perfection.

But it never learned from another Clinton mistake, which is that it’s not all about the beltway – the ground game matters, too. With a highly mobilized right wing getting its message out to congressional districts, hardcore opponents – the town hall screamers of last summer – came out of the woodwork, inevitably coloring the impressions of the casual political observer. Phone calls started coming in to congressional offices opposing the bill.  Poll numbers dropped.

Meanwhile, the White House, with both eyes on Congress, failed to fire up its own base. Obama held events here and there, but nothing like a sustained campaign to mold public opinion. Without that leadership, the progressives and moderates who knocked on doors for Obama simply weren’t there this time around to match the other side’s intensity. By the time Scott Brown showed up, some lawmakers were all but ready to be done with health care.

And so here we are. President Obama has gone all in, even going so far as to set a date for when he wants the House to vote. He has also assiduously courted iffy Democrats, inviting them over to the White House and no doubt seeking to buck them up. And with news that he’s about to embark on a barnstorming tour to stump for health care, it’s clear that the White House sees the importance of aggressively shaping public opinion and the media narrative.

But will it be enough? Or is it too little too late? And will the progressive grassroots that helped Obama win the presidency be there to neutralize motivated right-wing foot soldiers and Astroturf groups? Or will those GOP robocalls and conservative vehemence ultimately topple unsteady Democrats? It’s a real test of leadership for the president. And as others have rightly pointed out, it’s a test of the progressive base, too.

Some Quick Thoughts on the Rockefeller Proposal

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) today introduced a bill which, if passed, would become the “Stationary Source Regulations Delay Act.’’ This bill, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) proposal that I’ve written about before, would curtail the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA). There are major differences between the proposals, however, and I think these are worth clearing up. I suspect media reports will group the two proposals together, even though the practical and political effects will be very different.

First, even though both proposals target EPA CAA authority over GHGs, they are mirror images of each other. The Murkowski proposal would kill the EPA’s endangerment finding for mobile sources (cars and trucks). In the short term, this would block all EPA efforts to regulate GHGs under the CAA, though in principle the EPA could make a new endangerment finding under a different section of the act and go after other kinds of sources. The Rockefeller proposal would leave the endangerment finding and mobile source regulation intact but, as its title indicates, would impose a two-year moratorium on EPA regulation of stationary-source (power plants, etc.) GHGs.

The Rockefeller bill makes much more sense, I think. This isn’t to say I personally support it, just that it addresses concerns over EPA regulation of GHGs much more effectively than the Murkowski proposal. Mobile-source regulation is the one piece of the CAA/GHG process that has broad support. The regulations the EPA plans to finalize this month were a product of compromise with the auto industry last year. All of the comprehensive climate bills I know of leave EPA authority over mobile sources intact. It’s EPA regulation of stationary sources, and in particular requirements for preconstruction GHG permits, that is causing the most controversy and putting the most pressure on Congress. If Congress wants to relieve this pressure then the Rockefeller path is the right one, not Murkowski.

Second, the political differences are obvious though I’m skeptical about whether the end result will be any different. Rockefeller is a Democrat, and while Murkowski has support from some moderate Dems, this new proposal seems pitched more directly at the center-left core of the Senate. Unlike Murkowski’s proposal, it will need 60 votes to pass, but it is probably more likely to get them. Similar bills are being proposed by House Dems.  This makes it much more likely, I think, that the bill will pass one or both houses—though I leave it to more adept vote-counters to make the call.

Even if the bill did pass both houses, it would still have to be signed by President Obama. I cannot imagine the president would sign the bill. It blocks action on GHGs that the president has publically stood behind. Also, and maybe more importantly, the bill would take an arrow out of the quiver of the executive branch. No president likes that. Until and unless that changes—or unless Congress somehow comes up with a veto-proof majority—the Rockefeller bill won’t become law.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/haglundc/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

This item is cross-posted at Weathervane.

Must Read: Admiral Mullen’s Speech at Kansas State

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If you are at all interested in the future national security of the United States, do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to read Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen’s speech yesterday at Kansas State University. It’s clear that Adm. Mullen understands the changing nature of warfare in the 21st century and that the military must adapt along with it. Mullen’s fears that U.S. foreign policy is “too dominated by the military” is particularly striking given that Adm. Mullen is, well, the highest ranking military officer in the U.S. military. Or, to quote Nathan Hodge of Danger Room, Mullen seems to be saying that, “avoiding wars is as important as winning them.”

Adm. Mullen endorses a strong, smart and principled national security worldview that progressives should embrace. Here are a few extended excerpts (they’re long, but worth it), which should double as powerful rebuttals to any conservative who accuses progressives of being “weak on security”:
On the nature of war:

[T]here is no single defining American way of war. It changes over time, and it should change over time, adapting appropriately to the most relevant threats to our national security….[T]he military may be the best and sometimes the first tool; it should never be the only tool. The tangible effects of military engagement may give policymakers a level of comfort not necessarily or wholly justified. As we have seen, the international environment is more fluid and more complex than ever before.
[…]
Contrary to popular imagination, war has never been a set-piece affair. The enemy adapts to your strategy and you adapt to his. And so you keep the interplay going between policy and strategy until you find the right combination at the right time.
[…]
Trying everything else is not weakness. It means we don’t give up. It means we never stop learning, and in my view if we’ve learned nothing else from these two wars of ours, it is that a flexible, balanced approach to using military force is best.

On the relationship between defense and diplomacy:

Defense and diplomacy are simply no longer discrete choices, one to be applied when the other one fails, but must, in fact, complement one another throughout the messy process of international relations….[W]e cannot count on military might alone. We have to invest in our homeland security; we have to improve and better coordinate our intelligence; and we will have to use diplomacy, because no one nation can meet the challenges of an interconnected world acting alone. My fear, quite frankly, is that we aren’t moving fast enough in this regard.

 

U.S. foreign policy is still too dominated by the military, too dependent upon the generals and admirals who lead our major overseas commands. Secretaries Clinton and Gates have called for more funding and more emphasis on our soft power, and I could not agree with them more. Should we choose to exert American influence solely through our troops, we should expect to see that influence diminish in time.

On the use of force:

 

Force should, to the maximum extent possible, be applied in a precise and principled way….[P]recisely applying force in a principled manner can help reduce…costs and actually improve our chances of success. In this type of war, when the objective is not the enemy’s defeat but the people’s success, less really is more. Each time an errant bomb or a bomb accurately aimed but against the wrong target kills or hurts civilians, we risk setting our strategy back months, if not years.

Precise and principled force applies whether we are attacking an entrenched enemy or securing the population. In either case, it protects the innocent. We protect the innocent. It’s who we are. And in so doing, we better preserve both our freedom of action and our security interests.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thejointstaff/ / CC BY 2.0

The Dragon’s Dilemma: A Closer Look at China’s Defense Budget and Priorities

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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This is the first installment in a three-part series investigating the state of China’s military. The other articles in this series will look at China’s missile capabilities and naval modernization.

This week, China’s National People’s Congress will convene its annual meeting in Beijing. Among the developments that are expected from the gathering is one we should all pay close attention to: the announcement of China’s 2010 defense budget. Beijing has given the military double-digit budget increases for well over a decade, and some Chinese security analysts are calling for a larger-than-usual boost this year in a bid to signal China’s anger over the latest U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Whatever the exact amount of China’s official defense budget, the announcement will once again highlight China’s growing military power — and the potential challenge it poses to the U.S.

Widely dismissed as a “junkyard army” for many years, the Chinese military is now raising quite a few eyebrows with its growing capability. In recent years, China has deployed increasingly potent anti-access capabilities, including modern surface ships, advanced submarines, fourth-generation fighter aircraft, and conventional cruise and ballistic missiles. China is also enhancing its C4ISR*, space and cyber warfare capabilities; developing an anti-ship ballistic missile designed to target U.S. aircraft carriers; and modernizing its nuclear forces.

The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) growing capabilities in these areas, along with other recent notable events — including Beijing’s controversial anti-satellite missile test in January 2007; its January 2009 missile defense intercept test; and the Chinese Navy’s unprecedented and continuing participation in counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia since December 2008 — are raising questions about whether an increasingly powerful China represents a looming military threat to the U.S. and its allies. In an article published last month, the Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney argued, “China is responding to what it perceives to be our declining power by becoming ever more well-armed, assertive and contemptuous — a formula for serious, and possibly ‘major,’ conflict ahead.”1

Fueling China’s accelerating modernization — and the concerns of many observers who see it as an emerging military competitor — is the rapid growth of the country’s defense budget since the late 1990s. In recent years, China’s civilian leadership has been increasing the PLA’s resources in an attempt to develop more credible options for engaging Taiwan and countering U.S. military intervention.

With the warming of the China-Taiwan relationship over the past 18 months, the PLA’s rationale for further hikes in defense spending is now increasingly tied to China’s growing political, economic and security interests on the global stage. These expanding interests, however, may eventually have to be balanced with the need to address pressing domestic problems, especially if China is unable to maintain current economic growth rates. How China juggles these competing priorities will shape its global role and could have major implications for U.S. foreign policy and national security interests. It could, as critics fear, lead to a confrontation down the road. Or it could do just the opposite, by creating opportunities for Chinese global engagement and a new security partnership with the U.S.

China’s Defense by the Numbers

At the outset of the economic reform era in the 1970s, China’s leaders stated that military modernization would take a backseat to domestic economic development. Leader Deng Xiaoping argued that it would be necessary to delay major increases in defense expenditure until China achieved a higher level of economic development. By the end of the 20th century, Deng predicted that China would be much more powerful economically and would then be able to spend more on military modernization without shortchanging other national priorities.

In line with this guidance, the PLA’s share of the budget declined throughout the ’80s. While it saw nominal increases in the late ’80s and early ’90s, much of that gain was devoured by inflation. It was not until the late ’90s — when rapid economic growth began and Beijing became determined to develop more credible military options against Taiwan and the U.S. in a cross-Strait conflict — that the PLA finally started to enjoy major increases in the defense budget.

This trend has continued even as the cross-Strait relationship has improved dramatically following Taiwan’s 2008 election of President Ma Ying-jeou, who favors a closer and more constructive relationship with China. But while Beijing clearly welcomes warming ties with Taiwan, China still increased its defense budget by 14.9 percent in 2009, bringing the official budget to approximately 481 billion RMB, or about $70 billion. This increase was a bit lower than in recent years — the PLA received a 17.6 percent increase in 2008 and a 17.8 percent increase the previous year — but it reflected a determination to continue modernizing the military even as cross-Strait relations have become more cooperative. Chinese officials assert that the increases are mainly for raising salaries and improving benefits for servicemen, purchasing modern equipment and building new facilities.

China’s official figures put defense spending at about 1.4 percent of the country’s rapidly growing GDP in 2008. The official numbers tell only part of the story, however. The true level of China’s current defense budget is difficult to calculate, largely because some items are not reflected in the announced defense budget. Among these are expenditures on foreign weapons procurement, paramilitary expenses, state subsidies for the defense-industrial complex and some defense-related R&D programs. Moreover, the number of funding sources and the involvement of multiple levels of government further complicate attempts to estimate China’s defense spending. Consequently, outside estimates range from about one-and-a-half to three times the official budget figure. The 2009 edition of the U.S. Department of Defense’s annual report on Chinese military power places total Chinese defense spending in 2008 somewhere between about 1.75 and 2.5 times the PRC’s official number. Some other outside estimates, however, are lower. For example, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which maintains the highly regarded SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, estimates that China’s defense budget in 2008 was about 1.4 times the figure that was officially released by China.

Attempting to project future trends in Beijing’s military spending is even more complex. Forecasts of Chinese military spending over the next 10 to 20 years vary widely, depending on the methods employed and the underlying assumptions about China’s future economic performance. For example, in 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense predicted a possible threefold or greater increase in China’s defense spending over the next 20 years, which would place its military budget at $210 billion to $315 billion (in constant 2005 U.S. dollars) or more in 2025.2 In contrast, a RAND Corporation report released at about the same time projected that in 2025 Chinese defense spending would reach about $185 billion (in constant 2005 U.S. dollars). That’s still an impressive sum, but considerably lower than the Pentagon forecast.3 These divergent estimates reflect uncertainty not only about future economic performance, but also about how China’s leaders will choose to allocate budgetary resources when faced with a variety of new security challenges on the one hand and competing domestic priorities on the other.

New Missions for the PLA

As China’s political, economic and security interests become more global and complex, the PLA’s roles and missions are evolving to contend with an increasingly diverse set of security challenges. In December 2004, President Hu Jintao assigned the “New Historic Missions” to the PLA, which encompass four key roles:

  1. help the Communist Party maintain and consolidate its ruling position
  2. provide a strong security guarantee for national development
  3. safeguard national interests
  4. safeguard world peace and promote common development

To fulfill these expanded missions, Chinese leadership has tasked the PLA with enhancing its capabilities to successfully conduct combat operations and participate in military operations other than war. Specifically, President Hu’s concept of “multiple military tasks” provides a conceptual framework for the PLA to properly balance the development of the capabilities required to fulfill its evolving combat duties along and with other military missions.

As Chinese Central Military Commission Vice Chairman General Xu Caihou has indicated, military operations other than war are emerging as “routine and constant missions for the military,” adding:

We believe that in the current era when the tides for peace, development and cooperation are ever more keenly felt, to conduct military operations other than war is becoming an increasingly important form of applying military forces.4

Chinese strategists indicate that Beijing’s conception of such operations covers a wide variety of activities, including counterterrorism operations, participation in UN Peacekeeping Operations, noncombatant evacuation operations, emergency disaster relief operations, international humanitarian assistance and counterpiracy patrols.

But while the military’s participation in such activities, like its counterpiracy patrols off of Somalia, is clearly seen as important, the PLA’s core mission remains clear. As General Xu declared, “To deter and win wars remains the top priority of the armed forces.”5 As part of the concept of “multiple military tasks,” Chinese strategists envision several potential types of combat operations, including, but not limited to, large-scale island attack, air defense and border-area defense operations.

The PLA faces the challenge of balancing the relationship between enhancing combat operations and ramping up military operations other than war. Chinese analysts argue that such activities can help improve the PLA’s ability to win wars by giving it experience in critical areas such as command and decision-making, projection of military strength, logistics and support operations, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities. Growing involvement in such missions can enhance China’s image and offer valuable operational experience that will help improve its ability to conduct combat operations and support the core goal of deterring and winning wars.

Potential Constraints

Even as the PLA’s involvement in nontraditional security missions grows, it seems likely that demand for greater defense spending may increasingly come into conflict with the rising costs of China’s domestic priorities. Indeed, calls for increased defense spending are likely to be matched by growing demands for government outlays to cope with a range of social problems. Such problems, which emerged as consequences of Beijing’s economic reforms during the Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin eras, include a growing income gap, the glaring inadequacies of the Chinese health care system, worsening environmental degradation and rising social unrest. Tensions that have risen from these challenges could worsen if the pace of China’s economic growth slows.

Under the leadership of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, China has been shifting from an economic strategy that emphasized rapid GDP growth above all else to an approach that devotes more attention to reducing income inequality and promoting sustainable economic development. As part of this new approach, Chinese leaders stress that the country’s economic policies must promote the development of a “harmonious society” based on balanced growth and sustainable economic development.6 Hu and Wen are likely to have their hands full, as top officials historically have been evaluated using metrics associated with the rapid growth strategy. The shift in orientation may also begin to impose serious constraints on further dramatic increases in military spending in the future.

Outlook and Implications

Rapid economic growth has allowed Beijing to dramatically increase defense spending since the late 1990s. It has been able to do so without having to make tradeoffs between military modernization and other policy priorities. In the not too distant future, however, the government is likely to face growing pressure to devote a larger share of government spending to cope with serious domestic problems. As these problems become more pressing, Beijing may have to make tough choices it has previously managed to avoid, especially if economic growth slows.

China remains determined to continue modernizing its military for at least two major reasons. First, China still sees military power as an important aspect of its Taiwan policy even in a time of warming relations. Second, Beijing appears convinced that China’s growing global interests require a much more capable military. Indeed, the concepts of “new historic missions” and “multiple military tasks” provide a more expansive rationale for Chinese military modernization beyond Taiwan.

How should the U.S. and the world view these changes? To the extent that new roles and missions ultimately require a greater global presence for the PLA, we could see growing concerns about China’s expanding military capability in some countries, rising tensions within China over some of its traditional foreign policy principles and potentially new challenges for the U.S.-China security relationship. That said, a greater Chinese military presence on the global stage might also create opportunities for an increased U.S.-China partnership. Indeed, both sides have highlighted issues such as antipiracy and international humanitarian assistance as possible areas for greater U.S.-China cooperation.

* Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance

1 Frank Gaffney, “Obama vs. the All-Volunteer Military,” Center for Security Policy, February 1, 2010.

2 Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2005, pp. 21-22.

3 Keith Crane, Roger Cliff, Evan Medeiros, James Mulvenon and William Overholt, Modernizing China’s Military: Opportunities and Constraints, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2005.

4 General Xu Caihou, “The Chinese Military: A Force for Multiple Military Tasks,” Speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 26, 2009.

5 Xu, “The Chinese Military: A Force for Multiple Military Tasks.”

6 For a detailed explanation of this approach, see “Communiqué of the Sixth Plenum of the 16th CPC Central Committee,” People’s Daily, October 12, 2006.

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Another Bite at the Apple

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The president held a press conference today to announce that yes, indeed, he will press Congress to act on health care reform this month. There’s was nothing immensely new about that development, but it’s interesting that Obama used the occasion to lay out, quite succinctly, the three key points he made in his health care summit with Republicans: why comprehensive reform is essential, why the time for “negotiations” is over, and why there’s nothing that unusual about the use of reconciliation (though he did not use the word, a very unfamiliar term to most people outside Washington) to get the job done. He essentially took another bite at the apple of responding to the most effective Republican lines of attack, and will apparently do so some more in appearances on the road this month.

On the other hand, the presidential press conference may get demoted on the nightly news if a possible scandal involving Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) continues to develop. Massa, a freshman from a highly marginal district, abruptly let it be known he was retiring. Some sources say he’s suffering from a recurrence of cancer, but Politico is reporting that he was about to come under investigation by the Ethics Committee for allegedly sexually harrassing a male staffer. If the latter story has a basis in reality, it will be big news tonight.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Assessing the Marja Offensive

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I haven’t written much on the Marja offensive—the joint US/Afghan/NATO operation in the Helmand province city of the same name—because I wanted to see how it played out before drawing sweeping conclusions.

The assault on Marja (population 80,000) is now in its third week. It is the largest offensive in Afghanistan by U.S./NATO/Afghan troops since 2002, involving some 5,000 total troops. Marja had been one of the last significant Taliban strongholds in Helmand province, and NATO and Afghan commanders had eyed it as potentially excellent example of the alliance’s new force posture and growing inter-operability with the Afghan military. “Force posture,” you ask? That’s right—lost in last year’s debate of how many American troops to send was the more important point about why extra forces were needed.

General McChrystal’s counter-insurgency strategy was a page ripped from General Petraeus’ Iraq playbook of early 2007, when violence in that war began to decrease significantly. It’s a military mindset that values protecting the local population over killing the enemy. General Petraeus rightly pointed out, “We don’t want to destroy Marja to save it.”

The mantra “clear, hold, and build” has been the recipe for success: clearing Taliban out of an area, holding the area so Taliban don’t immediately return, and building basic governing capacities that show locals that NATO and Afghan forces are serious about improving people’s lives, not just destroying. To execute this strategy, you need more boots on the ground.

It’s important for progressives to realize that though American casualties have been rising as our forces live among Afghans, that’s because they’re putting themselves in the firing line between civilians and the Taliban. Of course, civilians are killed, whether it’s because our forces have mistakenly identified a location as a Taliban hideout or because the Taliban has ruthlessly used civilians as human shields. There have been, depending on whose numbers you believe, probably somewhere around 25 civilian deaths in Marja thus far. They are all tragedies. But as Sarah Holewinski (full disclosure: a friend through the Truman National Security Project) of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Combat (CIVIC) says, care to avoid civilian casualties is at its highest in years:

Soldiers on the ground are telling us, ‘look, we’re restricting our air power. We’re going in on foot. We are shooting only when we know that that other combatant is carrying a gun. So we’re trying to distinguish as clearly as possible between civilians and combatants.’ ….And then when an incident actually does happen, they are very quick to do an investigation, and then pay compensation.

The offensive was repeatedly announced in the Afghan press weeks before it happened. Sounds crazy, right? But the military knew that even though many Taliban fighters would flee out of town, the better course of action was to give civilians time to prepare.

The military side of the campaign was relatively swift and effective. The Afghan flag now flies over Marja, and mid-level American officers are happy with the progress. Taliban certainly remain scattered throughout the countryside, but as long as they are dispersed away from the city with no real power-base, that’s acceptable for now.

But here comes the hard part—the “building” phase. General McChrystal says, “We’re not at the end of the military phase, but we’re clearly approaching that….The government of Afghanistan is in the position now of having the opportunity, and the requirement, to prove they can establish legitimate governance.”

 

McChrystal has said that there’s an Afghan “government in a box” (allegedly trustworthy Afghans set to temporarily run Marja) ready to roll in and start working on basic public services. That’s a plus because it clears out the local corruption-laden crew and stands a better chance of success, but potentially dangerous because the government transplants are aliens to the local power structures and traditional Afghan system of family-based patronage.

So what do the locals think? As far as I’ve observed, quotes from local tend to fall into three general categories, something along these lines and in roughly equal numbers:

  1. “Good riddance to the Taliban. This operation was needed.”
  2. “Life wasn’t so bad under the Taliban. It wasn’t great, but I was surviving. What are the Americans doing?”
  3. “The Afghan Army is completely incompetent. If they Americans don’t stay engaged in Marja, the whole deal will have been for nothing.”

Thus far, Marja seems to have been an effective demonstration of the first two aspects of counter-insurgency strategy (“clear” and “hold”), but the “build” will take months upon months to come to fruition. If the NATO/Afghan engagement produces an effective local government with decent public services, public opinion will begin to swing towards the first quote above. That’s a big “if.”

And if it is indeed one of the last major Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan — I’m not expert enough to weigh whether that’s true — the Marja operation will have certainly been worth it.

Rick Perry Gets Lucky Again

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Texas governor Rick Perry is not what you’d call a statesman, but as the old saying goes, if you can’t be good, be lucky. Perry’s been a very lucky–and opportunistic–politician. He was first elected to the Texas legislature as a Democrat (hard to believe, given his current behavior), and switched parties just in time to take advantage of the rise of the GOP in Texas. In his first statewide race, in 1990, he squeaked by the famous left-populist Jim Hightower to become Agriculture Commissioner; Hightower had not exactly made life easier for himself in Texas by becoming deeply involved in Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign.

In 1998, Perry hitched a ride to the top of Texas politics as George W. Bush’s running-mate, again very narrowly winning the general election (this time over John Sharp) with a lot of help from Bush associates who were getting ready for W.’s presidential run and didn’t want a Democrat wreaking havoc in Austin when the candidate was out of state. Perry inherited the governorship two years later. His two re-elections haven’t been terribly impressive: in 2002, he beat Rick Sanchez, a political neophyte widely perceived as running a very bad campaign, and in 2006, survived with just 39 percent of the vote in a crazy four-candidate general election.

Perry’s great stroke of luck this year was to run against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a formidable politician in the past, in absolutely the worst climate imaginable for a United States senator. Hutchison also obliged Perry by running an unfocused campaign with virtually no message (she joined Sanchez on the Houston Chronicle’s list of the ten worst campaigns in Texas history). Moreover, a third candidate, Tea Party activist Debra Medina, self-destructed by going on Glenn Beck’s show and sounding like a 9/11 “truther.” Perry manged to win yesterday with few votes to spare, garnering 51 percent of the vote against Hutchison’s 30% and Medina’s 19%.

We’ll see if Perry’s luck holds one more time in November; his Democratic opponent, former Houston mayor Bill White, is a respected politician who will not roll over and play dead. It says a lot about the incumbent’s residual weakness that he’s not a prohibitive favorite in a state like Texas in a year like 2010.

Perry gets mentioned now and then as a potential presidential candidate in 2012. He would definitely be stretching his luck by taking his act the national level, but don’t rule it out for a guy who had the opportunity to watch George W. Bush up close and personal when he turned privilege and perfect timing into an unlikely rise to the presidency.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.