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Obama’s Afghanistan Speech

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama’s speech last night was — to state the obvious — a tough one to give. Just think of the many constituencies the president had to address: not only the American public, but the military who have been in need of some direction, the Democratic base, terminally cranky Republicans, the Karzai government, the Pakistani government, and Bozo the Clown to boot. No one constituency would be fully pleased.

We all know that President Obama gives a wonderfully inspiring speech. I had a hunch that this address would not fall into that category. Rather than inspiring the public to work towards a distant American nirvana (as he did in the March 2008 Philadelphia race speech), West Point was more of a sales job.

With all that in mind, I was looking for the president to discuss five major topics:

1. Make a case for why we were in Afghanistan.

2. Explain our forces’ mission.

3. Address how he would work with the Karzai government.

4. Clearly outline the strategy for Pakistan.

5. State his interpretation of an exit strategy.

To put a “grade” on it, I’d give the president 3.5/5. Here’s why.

First, I thought he made a compelling case reminding Americans of why we’re there. He spent the first several paragraphs going over the history of what led us to this point. That’s been the toughest issue for much of hard left to grapple with — America has clear national security interests in Afghanistan, and it is unfortunate, but necessary, to enact a robust strategy to ensure the country’s safety.

It’s a rationale that has been so difficult for some to accept. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Garry Wills says:

[Obama] said that he would not oppose war in general, but dumb wars. On that basis, we went for him. And now he betrays us. Although he talked of a larger commitment to Afghanistan during his campaign, he has now officially adopted his very own war, one with all the disqualifications that he attacked in the Iraq engagement. This war too is a dumb one.

But it’s not a dumb war. It’s a necessary one, and I struggle to understand why Mr. Wills has become so disenchanted with President Obama over this decision when even he acknowledges that the president campaigned pledging a “larger commitment” to Afghanistan. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Second, I didn’t think the president went far enough in explaining the counter-insurgency strategy that American forces would be undertaking. To me, he missed an opportunity to explain that our forces are there to promote peace by protecting the Afghan population from the Taliban. So only half a point there.

Third, I was impressed with the president’s emphasis on working with and around the Karzai government. His particular emphasis on “Afghan ministries, governors, and local leaders” indicated the White House’s recognition that bypassing Kabul is an effective part to regional development across the whole country. A full point from me.

Fourth, the Pakistan strategy was certainly mentioned, if not emphasized, as one of the pathways to a successful disengagement. Sure, as the president said, we will “strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to target those groups that threaten our countries, and have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear.” Yes, we know it’s necessary, but I have a nagging sense that the “how” hasn’t been worked out yet. The White House’s overture on a comprehensive partnership deal with Pakistan is encouraging, but only part of the solution – a half-point.

Ah, and finally, that exit strategy. I would have preferred that our exit from Afghanistan be measured in terms of progress, not calendar dates, which merits a half-point deduction. I think David Ignatius came very close to summing up my feelings:

Obama thinks that setting deadlines will force the Afghans to get their act together at last. That strikes me as the most dubious premise of his strategy. He is telling his adversary that he will start leaving on a certain date, and telling his ally to be ready to take over then, or else. That’s the weak link in an otherwise admirable decision — the idea that we strengthen our hand by announcing in advance that we plan to fold it.

For a speech that was sure to please no one entirely, I thought it was a brave attempt at explaining a tough, unpopular, but ultimately correct decision.

Progressive Groups Offer Analysis of White House Plan for Afghanistan: Foreign Policy Experts Weigh In

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

MEDIA ADVISORY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 1, 2009

CONTACT:
Steven Chlapecka – schlapecka@ppionline.org, T: 202.525.3931
or Frankie Strum – frankie@trumanproject.org, T: 309-222-5788

WASHINGTON, DC—Representatives of six major progressive organizations – the Truman National Security Project, the Progressive Policy Institute, the National Security Network, the Center for American Progress, Third Way, and the New Strategic Security Initiative – will be available for comment and analysis on Wednesday morning after the President speaks to the nation on the administration’s plans to boost troop levels and revitalize our strategic commitment to Afghanistan.

“The narrative so far is that the left is against sending more troops and the right is for it,” said Jim Arkedis, Director of the National Security Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. “But that’s not the reality of the situation. There are reasons for progressives to take heart from much of the President’s new strategy, as well as reasons to tread carefully. We want to make sure all those voices are heard.”

WHO:
Gen. Paul Eaton (Ret.), Senior Adviser, National Security Network
Rachel Kleinfeld, CEO, Truman National Security Project
Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Jim Arkedis, Director of the National Security Project, Progressive Policy Institute
Andy Johnson, Director, Third Way National Security Program
Lorelei Kelly, Director, New Strategic Security Initiative
Frankie Sturm, Communications Director, Truman National Security Project (Moderator)

WHAT: 
Conference call to discuss President Obama’s Afghanistan speech and the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

WHEN:
 Wednesday, December 2 at 10 a.m.

CALL INFO: 
Dial In: 712-775-7000 
Access Code: 254870#

# # #

For more information on conference call or to speak with one of the panelist, please call (202) 525-3931 or email schlapecka@ppionline.org.

Time for Strategic Stamina

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Not even Michael Moore can accuse President Obama of rushing into war. He has taken two months to make a decision that seems dictated by the inescapable logic of his assessment of Afghanistan as a “war of necessity.”

To Dick Cheney, such deliberation is — surprise — a sign of weakness. After eight years of war, however, most Americans are probably relieved to have to a president who thinks long and hard before sending more U.S. troops into battle. That’s doubtless true as well of our NATO allies, who also will be asked to commit more troops despite widespread skepticism of the war in Europe.

Had Cheney and President Bush kept their sights on Afghanistan, Obama wouldn’t be in this fix. Perhaps the former vice president is carping because he doesn’t care to explain this week’s report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It recounts how the Bush-Cheney administration refused to commit the forces necessary to prevent Osama bin Laden and his henchmen, then bottled up in the Tora Bora mountains, from escaping across the border into Pakistan in 2001.

In any case, having thoroughly analyzed the multilayered complexities of the Af-Pak situation, President Obama now has a difficult sales job to perform. He must persuade war-weary Americans to back a second round of escalation — 34,000 more troops on top of the 30,000 he already has dispatched to Afghanistan. In essence, his message will be: we need to get in deeper to get out sooner.

He’s right. U.S. military commanders say more troops are necessary to stop Taliban advances, especially in southeastern Afghanistan. We also need more troops to accelerate the training of Afghan security forces. In his speech tonight, Obama is expected to stress that the purpose of his surge is not to defeat the Taliban, but to buy time for building up Afghan security forces so that they can take over the fight. He will emphasize the conditional nature of America’s commitment — conditioned on the Afghan government’s ability to win popular backing and legitimacy by fighting corruption, offering services, and providing security.

At the same time, Obama must convey a sense of strategic stamina. He must convince our friends as well as our enemies in the region that the U.S. is not planning to walk away from the struggle against Islamist extremism.

It will take time to build up strong Afghan forces, to help the central government become more effective, to reconcile with local tribal leaders in Pashtun areas, to build roads, schools, and other basic infrastructure. So even as the U.S. hands off responsibility to Afghans and draws down its combat troops, we must signal our enduring commitment to help the country defend itself against our mutual enemies. The Taliban and their al Qaeda allies need to know they will not be able to simply wait for us to tire of the struggle and go home.

And Pakistan needs to know this, too. If it looks like the U.S. is once again abandoning Afghanistan, the Pakistani military and intelligence service will be tempted to go back to their old bad habit of using the Afghan Taliban and other radical groups as foreign policy tools. By turning up the pressure in southern Afghanistan, Washington will be in a stronger position to insist that Pakistan keep pressing the Taliban on their side of the border, and flush al Qaeda leaders out of their havens.

No one needs reminding that patience is a virtue more than the president’s own party. Already, some leading Congressional Democrats are demanding what no president can responsibly offer — clear exit strategies and precise timelines for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

America has a vital interest in ensuring that Islamist extremists don’t seize power in Afghanistan — and, even more important, in Pakistan. No one knows when this struggle will end, but the stakes for our security are such that they call for the same constancy and resolve America displayed during the Cold War.

The Need for Progressives to Make Tough Choices on Security

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal responded to my post from last week on the strategic deliberations in Afghanistan. See here for his initial post and here for my response.

While there’s much in Michael’s post I disagree with on a substantive level (like his odd suggestion that “we want al Qaeda in Afghanistan.” Really?), my main beef is on a macro level, when he states that your friends here at the PPI continue “to reflect a perspective that has driven some dangerous foreign policy thinking in the Democratic Party in recent years…. Aren’t the days of ‘Democrats need to be as militaristic as the Republicans’ behind us?”

Michael is implying that I am mindlessly supporting President Obama’s reported escalation in Afghanistan out of a fear that Democrats will look weak on matters of national security.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In no way am I “as militaristic as the Republicans,” nor am I engaging in militarism for militarism’s sake. That’s ridiculous. My position boils down to what I think is essential to keeping the country safe. (On that note, Michael will no doubt re-raise the pre-invasion debate on Iraq, which I’m happy to deal with in a separate post.)

Here’s what it comes down to: Democrats can’t shirk the responsibility of making difficult choices on national security because of political expediency. It is easy to say, “We’re sick of being in Afghanistan, we’re sick of American soldiers dying, we have been al Qaeda-free since 2001, and all the poll numbers say Americans want out, so why don’t we just pack it in?”

But based on my analysis of the existing evidence, I firmly believe that America has ongoing national security interests in Af-Pak, and what the president will announce tonight offers the best possibility (of many imperfect choices) to permanently secure the country against a patient and resilient adversary. That might not be the popular or easy choice, but it’s the necessary one.

Michael would likely argue that he sees little compelling evidence to suggest an ongoing national security interest, or that there may be one, but it can be contained with a significantly smaller military footprint.

I’d disagree, of course, and so would President Obama, who has had far superior information on the subject than either of us, and whose campaign and governance to date hardly suggest a leader intent on duping the country into more unneeded military misadventures.

Welcome to Progressive Fix!

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I am pleased to announce the launch of Progressivefix.com, the place for independent-minded progressives and progressive-minded independents.

Here’s what you will find at our address: Lively political commentary informed by rigorous analysis and evidence. Inspired wonkery – a constant stream of bold ideas for solving big public problems. And a distinctly progressive point of view grounded in a spirit of radical pragmatism.

ProgressiveFix.com is the new face of an outfit that’s been around for two decades: the Progressive Policy Institute. Younger readers may not know that PPI was the main purveyor of policy innovations to Bill Clinton’s New Democrats – break-the-mold ideas that also migrated to Britain and other democratic countries around the world under the rubric of the “third way.”

Those ideas are now woven into America’s civic fabric: national service; a social policy that expects and rewards work; a “shared responsibility” model for universal health care now embraced by President Obama; performance-based and fiscally responsible government; a “second generation” of environmental policies that move beyond command-and-control regulation; public charter schools and accountability in education; and a tough-minded progressive internationalism that harnesses America’s strength to defend liberal democracy.

Getting Real About Governing

But that was then. What now?

PPI’s mission, modernizing progressive politics, hasn’t changed. What has is the political context in which we operate. At our founding in 1989, progressives were in the political wilderness. Now we’re in power. In fact, we may even be present at the creation of a new progressive majority in America — but only if we govern effectively.

Given our ultra-partisan, polarized and paralyzed politics, that won’t be easy. Taking our cue from Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton, progressives must make our democracy work again. That’s different from winning elections. It requires tempering passion with pragmatism, expanding, not narrowing, our appeal to the electorate, and standing up to special interests, even on our own side.

In practical terms, President Obama has to manage a heterogeneous party that includes moderates and liberals, and even a significant smattering of conservatives. Republicans may march in lockstep — and have certainly suffered for it — but Democrats can’t afford to indulge demands for ideological purity.

We don’t have much use for the self-appointed political commissars who have commandeered the blogosphere and cable TV. You can sputter all you want against, say, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, but the fact is Ben Nelson is a Democrat in a state that’s comprised of people who might have different views than the average liberal blogger. If you think a Nebraska Democrat should always vote the same way as a Vermont Democrat, then you probably don’t know much about politics and even less about building a progressive majority.

We’re struck by a paradox: The web has given millions of Americans a new way to participate directly in political discourse. That’s great. At the same time, however, the online conversation often seems hobbled by a stifling intellectual conformity. People flock to sites that validate their political preconceptions and prejudices, rather than encourage them to think for themselves.

Enriching the Progressive Debate

That’s where P-Fix comes in. This will be an intellectual free-fire zone that expands the boundaries for what is “permissible” for progressives to think and debate. We won’t hunt for heretics, nor will we allow partisan cant to trump intellectual honesty. We are determined to be a force for counter-polarization. Our arguments will be addressed not just to committed liberals, but also to progressive independents and open-minded moderates who hold the balance of U.S. politics. Without them, progressives can’t govern or build a durable majority.

But our distaste for the doctrinaire doesn’t make us mushy moderates. P-Fix believes that our country’s founding ideals are deeply radical. The history of progressive reform in America is the story of recurrent cycles of political upheaval, as reformers seek to reconcile those ideals with new economic and social realities. We urgently need a new burst of such “creedal passion,” in Samuel Huntington’s phrase, to cope with a new set of challenges to America’s democratic experiment.

Unlike some on the left, who look to European social democracy for inspiration, we favor a homegrown progressivism steeped in the classically liberal precepts of the American creed: individualism; social egalitarianism; equal opportunity, not results, within a system of competitive enterprise; a healthy skepticism toward central authority; civic self-reliance; and the conviction that America must be a beacon of liberty and democracy in the world.

In more specific policy terms, look to P-Fix for concrete ideas about how progressives can put security first and nurture liberal democracy abroad; spur entrepreneurship and economic innovation, wherein lies America’s comparative advantage in global competition; rebuild the middle class by building a modern energy and transport infrastructure for our country; restore fiscal responsibility in Washington, so that we don’t mortgage America’s future to foreign lenders; radically redesign our public schools – the great equalizer in American life — around principles of choice, autonomy, rigorous standards and customized learning; and promote ideas for political reform and transparent government to repair the public’s trust in our democracy.

Finally, P-Fix isn’t just about us. It’s an online home for a wider community of people who generally share our outlook. We will aggregate the best in pragmatic-progressive thought and research, not just from our network of contributors but from like-minded think tanks and publications as well. On P-Fix, you’ll find a wide variety of intriguing and insightful content – blog posts, policy memos, reports, book reviews, discussions, and podcasts – from an eclectic collection of established names and rising stars in the progressive community.

More than anything, P-Fix is about you. Give us your reactions, your criticisms, your own best ideas. Send us a check! But let us hear from you.

A Missed Opportunity on Lobbying

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Obama administration is continuing its troubling zero-tolerance and zero-nuance policy for lobbyists. In so doing, it is both misunderstanding the problem of lobbying and missing an opportunity for a meaningful solution.

As the Washington Post reported last week, “Hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists are likely to be ejected from federal advisory panels as part of a little-noticed initiative by the Obama administration to curb K Street’s influence in Washington, according to White House officials and lobbying experts.”

Undoubtedly, these advisory panels (the Post estimates there are “nearly 1,000 panels with total membership exceeding 60,000 people”) are full of lobbyists representing narrow and well-funded special interests. This is indeed a problem.

But it is a tricky problem to solve because many of these lobbyists are actually incredibly knowledgeable about arcane policy areas. Getting rid of them means these panels lose valuable policy expertise. And if there are particular industries or companies who want to participate in these advisory panels, presumably they will still find ways to have representatives who are not technically “lobbyists” (meaning only that they have not registered as lobbyists).

Unfortunately, the Obama approach is a blunt instrument that treats all lobbyists as interchangeably nefarious. This is simply not the case. And worse, it misses the real problem, which is the problem of balance. I’ve estimated that for every one lobbyist representing a public interest group or a union, there are now 16 lobbyists representing a business or business association. It just isn’t a fair fight, and it’s no wonder that many people have real concerns about the role that lobbyists play.

Here’s a better idea: Instead of banning lobbyists from participating on advisory councils altogether, the Obama administration could take a good, hard look at these panels and ensure that they have balanced representation. The administration could press advisory boards to take steps to consider all sides of an issue before making recommendations, such as setting up processes for outreach to interests who might not have the resources to pay lobbyists to represent them on boards.

The best public policy will emerge when the greatest diversity of perspectives gets incorporated, and when the most knowledgeable people participate. This should be the goal of the administration. Focusing on whether or not members of these panels are “lobbyists” is just fixating on a label. It would be much better to look at who actually participates and what they contribute.

The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of the Progressive Policy Institute.

Germany’s Afghanistan Scandal

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Berlin the city is bracing for its first winter snows, but Berlin the seat of government is in the middle of a storm of a very different type.

On Sept. 4, a German military commander near Kunduz, Afghanistan called in a NATO air strike against two stolen German tanker trucks, allegedly unaware that hundreds of civilians had gathered around them. The resulting attacks left as many as 150 dead, but the Merkel government, then in the thick of its reelection campaign, said the casualties were a tragic but unavoidable mistake, and the issue was largely irrelevant on election day.

Since then, the civilian leadership of the military has shifted — Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung moved to the labor ministry, while Economics Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg took over the defense post. Jung left the spotlight, and zu Guttenberg immediately called the attack “militarily appropriate.” Everything seemed calm, for a few weeks.

But new evidence shows that Jung may have known of at least some civilian casualties only hours after the attacks. Even worse, the leading daily paper in Cologne, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, reported that the Merkel government had internally determined before the election that the attack was not actually necessary, but had kept its assessment secret.

The new reports have led to Jung’s resignation, on Friday, as well as the sacking of two top defense ministry officials by zu Guttenberg. Merkel’s team now says it is “reassessing” the situation. But it’s unlikely to be enough: The parliamentary opposition, particularly the hard left, has been looking for an anti-war foothold for years, and the unfolding scandal is an excellent chance to step up its attacks on Merkel and zu Guttenberg, whom some see as a potential future chancellor candidate.

It’s important not to blow the scandal out of proportion. The German public response has been muted, in large part because no German soldiers died in the incident. For all its cultural differences, the public’s calculus for tolerating the violence of war is the same as in the U.S.: all death is tragic, but even civilian deaths overseas, at the hands of German troops, are unlikely to change the mood dramatically.

Indeed, one of the more salient aspects of the attacks is the discovery that German overseas aggression, long the bogeyman of German culture, is no longer such a big deal among the public. Germans are unlikely to accept, say, permanent bases or unilateral declarations of war anytime soon, but the Kunduz Affair shows that these days they are much less idiosyncratic in their attitudes toward war than the world has long believed.

Which isn’t to say that the scandal will have no effect. Given the conservatives’ hold on parliament, it is unlikely to disrupt their planned re-approval of the Afghan deployment next month. But it will make it harder to significantly increase troop deployments next year, something zu Guttenberg has hinted he will pursue in the coming months. Which is bad news for the United States and NATO, both of which are clamoring for more contributions from alliance members.

Iran’s Nuclear Noise

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Iran is making noise in the wake of the IAEA’s censure last week. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Iran’s state TV that the country will now build an astounding ten more nuclear plants.

It sure sounds bad, right? Conservatives are crowing that this is the result of President Obama’s weak-kneed, liberal “appeasement policy.” But for the life of me, I can’t figure out how exerting real pressure on Iran (with Russian and Chinese support no less) somehow amounts to appeasement.

Don’t get too upset by Iran’s brinksmanship just yet. Dr. Rebecca Johnson, editor of Disarmament Diplomacy, brings us all down a notch:

The idea that they have the economic wherewithal to build and get these [plants] functioning in a short space of time is nonsense. It’s bravado; it’s braggadocio.

That’s why this is all part of the negotiating dance. Its steps are something like this: The international community, stronger now than ever with Moscow and Beijing on board, squeezes Iran. Iran, beginning to sense that it has been backed into a corner, lashes out with wide-ranging threats. Then, everyone calms down and the real talk begins.

The Iranians know the score, too. Buried beneath the headlines was this revealing quote from Kazem Jalali, spokesman for the parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, who left the door open for more talks: “We have options ranging from complete and full cooperation to leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty on our table.”

Of course, negotiations may ultimately bear little fruit, but that judgment certainly can’t be made yet. Until the diplomatic shimmy-shake really gets swinging, cool resolve and patience are in order.

Follow the Leaderless: Palin and McCarthy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As I noted earlier, a new Washington Post poll of Republicans recorded the remarkable extent to which today’s rank-and-file GOPers can’t identify much in the way of any clear-cut Republican leaders. Having just read Sam Tanenhaus’ meditation on Sarah Palin in the New Yorker, I’m beginning to wonder whether the leaderless nature of the GOP represents a temporary vacuum or something a little more profound.

Here’s Tanenhaus’ kicker:

To judge from [Palin’s] book, the most exciting time in her life was the election of 2008, when she was embraced by the army of “everyday, hardworking Americans,” the “everyday folks,” and “thousands of regular Americans coming out with their signs” who mobbed her tumultuous rallies, thrilling to her odes to the “true America.” She gave them a “magnifying mirror.” They reflected her own image back to her. This adoration is kept alive today by the excited autograph-seekers in Grand Rapids and Fort Wayne, in the audience that gave Oprah Winfrey her best ratings in two years, and in the various advocacy groups that have sprung up to promote Palin for the Presidency: Conservatives 4 Palin, Team Sarah, Vets 4 Sarah, 2012 Draft Sarah Committee, Sarah Palin Radio, SarahPAC. The true meaning of Palinism is Sarah Palin—nothing more and nothing less. She is a party unto herself.

Now it’s hardly novel to observe that the excitement Palin has aroused among (particularly) cultural conservative activists reflects how closely she resembles them, or that her fans celebrate her lack of conventional credentials or policy knowledge as a badge of honor. But it may also reflect a genuine leadership crisis in the conservative movement and the GOP, wherein no one who is not a Palin-style “mirror” of grassroots qualities can be trusted.

The Accidental Populist

 

It’s not enough to call this sentiment “populist.” Historically, most “populist” leaders have represented a preexisting ideological set of beliefs in one or both major political parties, and a relatively specific set of policy goals. Yes, populists like Tom Watson (with his dirt-farmer persona) and William Jennings Bryan (with an idiom derived largely from the Bible) drew some of their appeal from personal identification with the lives and values of people who felt disenfranchised. But they were also genuine leaders who pulled their followers along to positions on policy matters and political loyalties they might not have embraced on their own.

The history of “right-wing populism” in this country is murkier and more controversial. But by and large, the conservative populist impulse has been one that relatively conventional Republican politicians (notably Nixon and Reagan) or regional reactionaries (George Wallace) have exploited in the pursuit of conventionally conservative ends.

Palin strikes me as more like another famous conservative “populist,” Joseph R. McCarthy. And I don’t say that in order to invoke an invidious identification of the overall political dangers represented by St. Joan of the Tundra and the famously irresponsible red-hunter. What strikes me as similar is the extent to which both politicians were relatively ordinary people who were suddenly swept into vast celebrity by an almost accidental association with grievances poorly advocated by conventional political leaders.

McCarthy stumbled upon the power of many years of accumulated unhappiness — mostly among heartland conservatives, but elsewhere as well — with a bipartisan foreign policy led by northeastern elites that aligned the U.S. with what many considered historic national enemies: not just the Soviet Union, but “Europe” generally, and for many Irish-Americans, the United Kingdom. It’s sometimes forgotten that many of McCarthy’s red-hunting conservative allies fulminated against the “loss” of China and the “betrayal” of Korea because they deeply resented a Euro-centric foreign policy, as reflected in their general opposition to the establishment of NATO.

At a deeper level, many of McCarthy’s supporters (particularly in the Midwest) were the very people who were initially opposed to going to war with Nazi Germany, on the theory that Hitler represented a Western bulwark against communism; even those who didn’t feel we backed the wrong side in Europe often thought we should have negotiated an armistice with Germany that would have avoided the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe. The eventual consolidation of conservatives in favor of an aggressively internationalist anti-communism was a later development, but it has obscured the isolationist roots of the McCarthy uprising.

McCarthy eventually came to grief, of course, in part because of his sloppy and reckless tactics, but more immediately because he extended his attacks on Democratic foreign policy “betrayals” to attacks on the Eisenhower administration and even the Army. And thus the entire leadership class of the Republican Party brought down the hammer on the fiery Wisconsin, even as they sought to co-opt his appeal by their own anticommunist fervor.

A Party Under the Influence

 

Like McCarthy, Palin is appealing to a variety of unredeemed cultural and political discontents, and like McCarthy, she’s gradually extended her liberal-baiting into attacks on conventional Republican pols, most notably the people surrounding the very presidential campaign that made her a celebrity. Unlike McCarthy, however, she’s not taking on a highly popular and newly elected Republican president, but a defeated GOP establishment that millions of conservative activists believe betrayed them through “big government” initiatives, excessive bipartisanship, and the failure to successfully execute a counter-revolution against legalized abortion, legitimized homosexuality, and other forms of cultural pluralism and diversity (or as they would say, “relativism.”). Moreover, said establishment has also been terribly weakened by its association with economic calamity, caused, so thinks the conservative “base,” by the reward-the-crooks-and-welfare-loafers “big government” betrayals of the autumn of 2008.

This doesn’t mean that Palin is destined to fill the leadership vacuum in the Republican Party. Like Joe McCarthy, she’s more suited to act as a vehicle for discontent that as the agent for its vindication. But make no mistake, the contemporary dynamics of the Republican Party and the conservative movement make it very unlikely that anyone from that quarter will curb her as Ike and his allies curbed and then broke McCarthy. If and when Palin succeeds again in creating a national public policy furor via a casual Facebook post, as she did with the famous “death panel” screed (arguably as irresponsible as anything Joe McCarthy said), it’s more likely that Republicans will co-opt her than repudiate her. So while Sarah Palin is unlikely to become the leader of the GOP, she may well play a major role in setting the terms on which anyone else can command the leaderless masses she embodies.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Moving to the Right, Without Direction

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Today’s Washington Post features a big new poll of self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Unsurprisingly, these voters don’t like Barack Obama, don’t like the general direction of the country, and don’t want their leaders to help enact health care reform legislation (not that they are in any danger of doing so).

The two findings most worth paying attention to are (1) yet another confirmation that Republicans are undergoing a rightward shift; and (2) the complete lack of a consensus about Republican leadership.

On the ideological front, there’s been a modest but revealing shift in the composition of the Republican rank-and-file since the last time the Post polled them, in 2007. Asked if they regard themselves as liberal, moderate, conservative, or very conservative, GOPers chose this last category, the most extreme available, more than ever. In June of 2007, self-identified liberals (11% of the total) and moderates (24%) together outnumbered those insisting on calling themselves “very conservative” (30%) by five percentage points. Now the “very conservative” are up to 32%, while “moderates” have declined to 22% and “liberals” have been nearly halved, to 6%. Overall, “conservative” GOPers currently overwhelm “moderate” GOPers by nearly a three-to-one margin. This is in sharp contrast to the ideological profile of the Democratic Party, in which the number of “moderates” equals and usually exceeds self-identified “liberals.” The overwhelming ideological impetus in the Republican Party is centrifugal, not centripetal.

The second finding of note is that today’s GOPers have no agreement whatsoever about where to look for leadership. Offered an open-ended question about “the one person [who] best reflects the core values of the Republican Party,” nobody receives over 18%, and 8% insist “there is no leader.” The last presidential nominee, John McCain, does respectfully well at 13%, though nobody really thinks of him as the future of the GOP, and his running-mate, Sarah Palin, runs first at 18%, out of a combination of celebrity and her special appeal to social issue extremists. After that, no one scores in double digits. The congressional leaders, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, each weigh in at a booming one percent.

All this adds up to a situation where the increasingly conservative rank-and-file “base” of the Republican Party is pulling its putative leaders to the right rather than following their direction. Given the traditionally hierarchical nature of the GOP, that may be a refreshing change for its members, but it’s not exactly designed to produce a message or candidates that appeal to the rest of the electorate.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Yet More on the Filibuster and Polarization

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I was going to title this post, “Ed Kilgore, You are Dead to Me,” but then again, I like Ed a lot, and he’s far more knowledgeable about politics than I am, and I don’t disagree with much of what he’s said about the filibuster.

Just as Ed isn’t “hell-bent on eliminating the filibuster,” neither would I shed many tears if it were to go away. I, too, object to how routine filibuster threats have become. That said, I do think that its elimination would have the potential to hurt progressive aims. Saying that the Senate “has a built-in red-state bias” makes the point — get rid of the filibuster and that bias means that red-state priorities are more likely to benefit from its elimination.

What I’d like to do here is start the first of a couple of posts on political polarization to defend my position that the filibuster wouldn’t be such a problem if we could make the Congress more representative of the nation. I think this point is actually implicit (almost explicit!) in commentary from Mark Schmitt and Ezra Klein that notes how the routinization of the filibuster is a recent phenomenon that owes its timing to the completion of what Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck have called “The Great Sorting-Out.” Over the past 40 years, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats have gone the way of the dodo bird, making the parties more polarized along ideological lines.

LBJ could count on Medicare passing in 1965 because the existence of liberal and moderate Republicans made the successful deployment of the filibuster unlikely. On the GOP side, conservatives would have had to court a sizeable number of right-leaning Democrats to make a filibuster threat credible. The difficulty of doing so (particularly with a southern Democrat as intimidating as LBJ applying countervailing pressure) gave Republican moderates little incentive to go along with such a threat. On the Democratic side, the opportunity for a single senator to engage in grandstanding or deal-making in exchange for his vote was limited by the same dynamics — the ability to get moderate GOP votes would have allowed the leadership to ignore such threats. Unless the issue was one as momentous and controversial as civil rights, southern Democrats and conservative Republicans would not collaborate across the aisle.

Fast-forward to 1994, when there were far fewer conservative Democrats and far fewer moderate Republicans. In such an environment, the filibuster became an obvious strategy — because it could work. The filibuster was not a problem until the completion of The Great Sorting-Out. (And yes, Republicans have deployed filibuster threats far more often than Democrats have, largely because the Democrats are more dependent on their moderates than the Republicans are on theirs — a point to which I’ll return in the next post.)

Now, Ed is right that the power that party primaries give the least-moderate voters is not solely to blame for this (though let’s not discount the likelihood that the primary reforms between 1968 and 1972 accelerated the ideological sorting between the parties). But a solution to political polarization need not address its causes.

The key questions, it seems to me, are (1) whether one thinks that the parties are ideologically representative of their supporters or members and (2) whether one thinks that that is true on both sides. Kicking (2) to my next post, I’ll just say that Morris Fiorina’s research definitively shows that the obvious political polarization among elites, political junkies, and elected officials is not reflected among Americans as a whole. The reason that we have more political polarization — even between presidential candidates — is because the candidates on offer have been chosen by less-moderate primary voters and activists. Because relatively moderate voters still have to choose between two options, the growing polarization of party activists and primary voters translates into growing polarization among elected officials — even as the electorate has remained relatively moderate.

Whether you think the electorate is, in its heart of hearts, moderate is irrelevant in some sense, but what is fairly clear is that at least by the measures available, it has not become more polarized. And to circle back to my original contention that progressives should think twice before wanting to throw out the filibuster, political polarization makes the filibuster more important as a check against small majorities. The less moderate the two caucuses are, the more unrepresentative of popular preferences will be the legislation that can pass with narrow margins.

The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of the Progressive Policy Institute.

The Pentagon’s Most Expensive Weapon

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Download the full report.

When President Obama signed a $680-billion military policy bill last month, he fulfilled a promise to reform defense spending, slashing more weapons systems than any president had in decades. Left to wither were big-ticket programs like the F-22 fighter jet, the Combat Search and Rescue helicopter, the Airborne Lasers, and the Future Combat Systems. Conceived during the Cold War, these systems have come under criticism for their cost overruns and irrelevance to today’s unconventional conflicts.

The weapons bill represents a win for the president and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Gates, in particular, has made a mission of reforming Pentagon culture and breaking the grip of the military-industrial-legislative complex. But the reform of the procurement process hasn’t pleased everyone. For liberals, it doesn’t go far enough. Just before the November 2008 election, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) had called for an across-the-board 25-percent cut in defense spending, saying we didn’t need “all these fancy new weapons.” On the other side of the aisle, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) have accused Obama of “gutting”the defense budget.

It’s not surprising that weapons systems draw all the attention when defense spending reform comes up. They translate into jobs that defense contractors spread cunningly across the nation’s states and congressional districts. But the “guns versus butter” debates between liberals and conservatives miss a key point. It’s not just weapons that drive defense spending through the roof — it’s the people, too.

According to its official budget, the Defense Department will spend $533.8 billion in 2010 in the following categories:

  • Personnel: $136 billion
  • Operations & Maintenance: $185.7 billion
  • Weapons Procurement: $107.4 billion
  • Research & Development for Weapons and Technology: $78.6 billion
  • Other: $26.1 billion

The personnel figure, however, doesn’t come close to capturing what America is really spending on defense personnel. According to PPI’s calculations, the real price tag is much bigger: $301.1 billion each year, 121 percent higher than the Pentagon’s figure. In other words, if you want major savings in defense spending, cutting weapons systems and the ever-elusive “waste, fraud and abuse” won’t take you far enough.

The point here is not that our military spends too much on people. It’s that personnel costs are the untold story in the defense spending debate. The U.S. military has grown 50,000 troops larger since 2001. At the same time, America has been embroiled in two counterinsurgencies that depend more on boots on the ground than planes in the sky or ships at sea.

The new emphasis on manpower-intensive counterinsurgency will have enormous repercussions on defense spending long after the wars are over. The aim of this report is to raise awareness among policy makers and the public about the real costs of U.S. military manpower.

It deconstructs the budgets of the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to develop a more accurate overall measure of spending on America’s war fighters across their lifetime.

Calculating the Actual Cost of Manpower

 

Oddly, the Pentagon doesn’t even agree with itself about the total cost of military personnel. One of its public relations documents, titled “Taking Care of People,” says the Pentagon will actually spend $244.6 billion — or over $100 billion dollars more than the personnel account — on America’s service members in fiscal year 2010.

The Pentagon arrived at this figure by adding salaries of both active duty service members and civilian employees, plus services found under other accounts within the Pentagon’s budget, such as family support and housing. To this, the Pentagon adds costs partially paid out of the Department of Veterans Affairs, like military health care.

Fair enough. The $136 billion line item for personnel costs in the Pentagon’s 2010 budget is incomplete because it does not fully account for the indirect and lifetime costs of military personnel. However, the DoD selectively included pay and benefits that are not counted in the “Taking Care of People” calculation, while acknowledging other health care costs. Moreover, while it includes certain support costs for personnel (p. 31 of PDF), it ignores indirect costs associated with housing, moving, and transportation of personnel. And while it includes some benefits paid by the Department of Veterans Affairs, it omits VA retiree benefits (p. 153 of PDF).

A more accurate calculation of U.S. defense personnel spending should encompass three aspects of a soldier’s cost to the military:

1. The service member’s active association with the military. This period counts pay and benefits disbursed to personnel on active or reserve duty.

2. The indirect costs associated with active duty personnel that are vital to their ability to serve, such as housing and transportation.

3. The service member’s passive association with the military. This includes retiree and health-care benefits and services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In a sense, everything from housing for enlisted troops to cataract surgery for the Vietnam vet must be counted to capture what the U.S. really spends on its military personnel. Taking all that into account, we arrive at the following calculation from the 2010 line items in the budgets of the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs:

By this reckoning, in 2010, the U.S. government will spend a grand total of $301.1 billion on active duty and retired personnel, or 56 percent of what America spends on national defense. If DoD’s budget included the VA’s 2010 planned outlays for entitlements, health care and family support, the baseline Pentagon budget (excluding Iraq and Afghanistan) in 2010 would swell from $533.8 billion to $638 billion.

In short, U.S. defense spending is so high mainly because we maintain a highly professional, all-volunteer force and because of the global reach of America’s foreign policy. Ultimately, what we spend on defense reflects our foreign policy commitments. Much of America’s robust internationalist foreign policy is due to clear national security interests, as in Afghanistan. However, cost considerations must be part of the discussion, be they a decisive factor or not, when we talk about deployments. We may decide that the cost is worth incurring to keep our country safe, but being equipped with the knowledge of how much a deployment will cost us is simply a matter of good governance.

Soaring Personnel Costs

 

A perfect storm of extended overseas deployments and an expanding military will have ramifications on the Pentagon’s personnel spending obligations for years to come.

In 2001, there were 1.39 million troops on active duty; today, there are 1.44 million. The end-strength will continue to rise, assuming President Obama keeps his campaign pledge to increase the military’s size by 92,000 soldiers and marines. In July 2009, Secretary Gates called for an additional 22,000 Army soldiers, saying the persistent pace of operations in the two wars over several years has meant a steady increase in the number of troops who are wounded, stressed or otherwise unable to deploy with their units. In short, that’s an ever-expanding pool of overseas deployments, potential casualties, and lifetime benefit obligations.

The Department of Veterans Affairs budget tracks these accelerating obligations. Before America deployed to Afghanistan and then Iraq, the VA’s budget was $48.2 billion. As a result of those deployments, the VA budget has skyrocketed 134 percent to $112.8 billion in 2010. The spending, with a few annual variations, remains approximately a 50-50 split between discretionary costs — the bulk of which is devoted to medical care — and entitlement programs for veterans.

As the Obama administration moves to curtail American involvement in Iraq while devising a new strategy in Afghanistan, Congressional Budget Committee Chairman Rep. John Spratt’s (D-SC) prediction at a PPI event in February seems prescient: “I have a sneaking suspicion that the near-term costs are going to outweigh the near-term savings.” As those deployments end over the next several years, the best-case scenario is that VA spending will remain at the current elevated plateau.

One simple, but ultimately ineffective, way of reforming military spending on personnel is to cut the salaries and benefits of the men and women who have joined the U.S. military. However, that prescription treats the symptom and not the root of the problem. Moreover, it would penalize the hard-working men and women of the armed forces who perform their duties admirably — clearly not an option.

Another way to get costs down would be to return to the draft. But that would diminish our military’s prowess and morale — again, not an option for the U.S.

The problem of rising personnel costs can only be addressed from higher up the chain. Extended deployments overseas invariably increase costs because of the strain they place on the force — in casualties, logistics, sustainability, and recruiting and retention costs. Once the force has recovered from Iraq and Afghanistan, it is incumbent on America’s civilian leadership to carefully weigh the extended cost burden placed on the Pentagon’s personnel account when plotting our global security strategy. In short, America must choose its wars and deployments carefully, as exploding personnel costs are the untold story of Pentagon spending in 2010 and beyond.

None of this is to argue against sensible procurement reforms. Debates over which weapons to cut and which best serve America’s new foreign policy objectives and war-fighting doctrines are necessary. The White House needs to impose fiscal discipline on a Congress that doesn’t like to make tough choices.

However, debates about defense spending should be informed by realism about what really drives up costs. Our analysis yields a clear conclusion: it’s the people, stupid. America spends a lot mainly because its force is asked to do so much. Any clear-eyed assessment of Pentagon spending needs to take the costs and benefits of our overseas commitments into account.

Download the full report.

Update: The previous version of the piece contained a typo. It originally stated that the president signed “a $680-million military policy bill.” Thanks to reader John Rose for spotting the error.

PPI Relaunches

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

National Journal‘s James Barnes, writing for the Under the Influence blog, profiles PPI’s relaunch:

Last spring, the Progressive Policy Institute and the Democratic Leadership Council formally split, and now a revamped PPI is up and running with a new website to engage the public policy debate more effectively online and, in the words of long-time PPI president Will Marshall, to provide “a kind of ballast in the progressive coalition that keeps it close to the sentiments of the progressive center in America.”

Read the full article at the National Journal.

Time to Panic for Obama?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Sometime around 1:00 pm last Friday, you may have heard a loud caterwauling outside your window. That was the sound of the punditry class going gaga upon the release of Gallup’s daily tracking poll showing that President Obama’s job approval rating had finally inched below the symbolic 50 percent line.

Combined with the recent losses for Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia — and the alleged flight of independents into the waiting arms of the GOP in those elections — the milestone might be another indicator of the trouble this administration now finds itself in.

But let’s not lose our heads. The estimable Charles Franklin of Pollster.com takes a look at the polling data over the last few months and finds much ado about nothing:

There is no evidence that any group of Dems, especially liberal Dems are unhappy with Obama’s performance. Critical is that moderate and even conservative Dems have not moved away since August. Angry conservative Reps are indeed very unhappy with Obama, at almost the same level of disgust as Dems felt for Bush, but they too have reached a plateau at a steady 10% approval. The small number of moderate Reps have also plateaued (I’d discount small moves in the last week of the aggregation.)

So the point is simple: Claims of abandonment of Obama by independents (or lib-Dems or con-Dems) are substantially exaggerated over the past three months. Significant decline from May through August, yes indeed among Inds and Reps, but that trend halted in August.

Far from plummeting, Obama’s approval rating has stabilized in recent months to a range close to his percentage total in last year’s vote. And when did we decide that a president dipping below 50 percent was a kiss of death for the rest of his term? Pundits made a big deal of the Gallup news, calling the fall “historic,” as it was the fourth fastest rate of decline of any president since World War II. Third on that list? Ronald Reagan, who was so damaged by his swift descent that he failed to win Minnesota in the 1984 election. (He did win all the others.)

To put Obama’s 49 percent in proper context, take a look at this chart from the Wall Street Journal:

Presidential approval ratings since World War II

These are the approval ratings for all the presidents since World War II. Every single president save for Eisenhower and Kennedy dipped below 50 percent. In fact, Truman, Reagan, and Clinton all hovered around or dipped below the 40 percent mark at some point in their first terms. And yet they somehow managed to win reelection.

For all of the overheated talk about polls and public opinion, you can bet that there’s little panic in White House. As we’ve noted before, this White House seems to have an almost eerie capacity to block out the noise of the day-to-day and take the long view. Andrew Sullivan put it well:

He is strategy; his opponents are tacticians. And in my view, their tactics are consigning them to a longer political death than if they had taken a more constructive course.

In the Obama world view, a stumble is a non-event, a bad poll a blip. What counts is whether you get to the destination in the end. It’s an outlook that got him to the finish line during the campaign. Let’s see if it gets him to where he wants to go in the crucial months ahead.

Charlie Crist’s Blasphemy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate facing a conservative challenger who is attracting a lot of attention, support and money from conservatives around the country. He is, in fact, the number one target of the Club for Growth and other purge-obsessed conservatives determined to stamp out any hint of moderation in the GOP.

Crist’s opponent, former state House speaker Marco Rubio, has been picking up steam in the early polls, and is routinely trouncing the governor in local party straw polls. Aside from his gaudy national endorsements (including such conservative True Believers as Mike Huckabee, James Inhofe, and Jim DeMint), Rubio is assumed to have the private backing of his political patron, the Big Dog of Florida GOP politics, Jeb Bush. Crist, who aroused national conservative ire by endorsing President Obama’s stimulus package, increasingly has a great big bullseye on his back at a time when the right wing of the Republican Party is in a vengeful and triumphant mood.

So you’d think ol’ Charlie would be spending all of his time kissing the rings of talk radio hosts, yelling about socialism, sending out tea bags with his name stamped on it, and in general trying to build a Cristian Right. Florida is, after all, a closed primary state where the independents and conservative Democrats that Crist has attracted in the past can’t vote for him against Rubio unless they re-register as Republicans.

But to everyone’s surprise, Crist shows signs of doing the exact opposite: attacking not just Rubio, but his supporters, for being, well, wingnuts. In an interview with a Florida newspaper, Crist seems to be mocking Rubio’s supporters for being angry over nothing and for embracing nutty causes like that of the Birthers. Here’s how Evan McMorris-Santoro analyzed Crist’s apparent strategy for TPM:

While his attacks on Rubio’s conservative backers are sure to fire them up even more than they already are, Crist is hoping his confrontational approach will force Rubio into uncomfortable discussions about Obama’s citizenship and other right-wing rhetoric. He really had nowhere else to go — Crist’s record doesn’t allow him to make a serious run at changing the minds of Rubio’s supporters, so he has to run with the moderate message that has been successful in the past.

This being total blasphemy in the contemporary GOP, it will be interesting to see how it works out for Crist. If it does, Crist will become the maximum, and perhaps the sole, symbol of defiance against the rightward trend of the GOP. If it doesn’t, he may backtrack into can’t-beat-em-then-join-em territory, or add his scalp to the collection of the Club for Growth. Either way, that would be good news for Florida Democrats.

A Different Take on the Financial Transaction Tax

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Having just joined the Progressive Policy Institute from a stint on Wall Street, I’d like to offer a different perspective on the financial transactions tax (FTT).

Last week, Lee Drutman argued in favor of an FTT, saying that a transaction tax modeled after the one our British friends have would raise much-needed funds. Writing in light of the past year’s economic crisis, Drutman also said that an FTT would “throw a little sand in the gears of the giant financial speculation casino.” While both raising revenue and reining in Wall Street are goals worth pursuing, I would argue that the FTT is a second-best solution.

According to Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a proponent of the FTT, a Yankee equivalent of John Bull’s 0.25% transaction tax wouldn’t raise $100 billion — it would raise less than a third of that. You need to crank up the tax — to double the proposed amount on stocks and higher on other products — to get close to a hoped-for $100 billion in revenue.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that a transaction tax didn’t spare the British from any of last year’s financial crisis — they had housing crises, government bailouts, and bank nationalizations comparable to what we saw on this side of the Atlantic.

A transaction tax is simply too blunt an instrument. Pouring sand in the gears is not a way to slow a machine down — it’s a way to try to bring the machine to a halt. Trying to second-guess trader activity by taxing stocks and other securities at differing levels to generate sufficient revenue will only drive broker dealers to encourage trading in high-margin products to make up for the dead-weight loss of the tax. This would drive traders away from liquid products to illiquid ones, increasing systemic risk. This increased focus on complex structured products drains liquidity from the system, as we saw last fall.

A better solution is one along the lines in Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) proposed financial reform bill. In addition to heightened capital and leverage requirements for systemically significant, “too big to fail” banks, higher capital requirements and stricter leverage controls could be imposed on trading in complex financial instruments. This would drive Wall Street firms looking to goose returns through leverage from trading the complex products that contributed to last year’s crisis to more liquid — less systemically threatening — products.

Investors that would want to speculate on complex derivatives could still do so, providing they did it with their own money. And banks that wanted to sell those products could still do so, provided they had adequate capital to backstop those activities. Letting these properly priced incentives work their magic would allow the market to behave in a responsible manner. Revenue could then be generated from that market activity by taxing gains made by speculators at a rate in line with income tax rates.

This would achieve the goals the FTT sets out to do — rein in derivatives risk and raise revenues — in a way that leaves market forces free to be a driver of renewed growth in our economy. But I suspect the supporters of the FTT will want to have their say, and I look forward to hearing it.