issue: Politics

Stop the Madness: The New Politics of Stunts

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

On the heels of the controversy about this week’s perhaps terror alerts in Europe, I reflected on a recent experience with the very real costs of what you might call the terrorist-hysteria complex.

Two weeks ago, I was in Afghanistan on a U.S. government-sponsored mission to observe the Parliamentary elections on Saturday, September 18th. The day before, I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse and watched a dangerous drama unfold just outside. Our security guards strung a black curtain along our balcony rail to block prying eyes. Through two of the panels, I watched as a member of the Afghan National Police crouched behind a wall of olive-green sandbags about a hundred feet away and aimed his automatic rifle at a curve in the road to the right.

We were in Panjshir, a valley about two and a half hours north of Kabul. At that moment, a mullah up the road was leading a protest at an elementary school in response to the burning of a Koran by by two men in Tennessee named Bob Old and Danny Allen. (This was different from Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who canceled his burning.)

You probably never heard about the Tennessee story. When you watch the video, it’s mind-blowing that these two characters somehow animated events oceans away. But seven thousand miles away, amped up both by a local hair-trigger media and Afghan opportunists looking to stir up trouble, Bob Old and Danny Allen — names we will almost certainly never hear again — created real danger and real expense.

On the mission with me were two security professionals from the UK and the U.S., two Afghan security men, a translator, and my partner, all funded by a U.S. aid agency and U.S. taxpayer dollars. We were supposed to be out in the field, interviewing government officials, asking probing questions about the quality of the election, the depth of the rule of law. I should have been helping to determine whether the billions of dollars and gallons of blood our warfighters have poured into Afghanistan is worth it.

But we instead spent the day stuck in our guest house, pawns in the mad world of stunt-driven politics. There was a striking parallel between the stunts back in America and the Taliban’s efforts in Afghanistan. Both were aimed at controlling the actions of millions through discrete acts of violence. Both take advantage of the nexus of blogs, a 24-hour news cycle, and political opportunism. And both have real consequences not only on our perception of reality, but on policy.

Read the entire article in the Huffington Post.

What’s Progressive About the U.S. Military

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

This post is the first in a series about the Progressive Military

It has now been nine years since the 9/11 attacks, and since that day the average American has heard an awful lot about the military.  We are fighting extremism worldwide and still have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Yet many progressives remain uncomfortable with the military, often assuming that it is a conservative organization because political conservatives are so eager to identify themselves with our troops.

This is a series about how the military is a more progressive organization than many people give it credit for. It will help progressives better appreciate the many ways that the U.S. Military operates and accomplishes progressive goals. It is also aimed at conservatives who implicitly trust the military and might see issues like climate change, healthcare, economic opportunity and energy policy as vital issues.

The military is a more progressive organization than many give it credit for and it is my hope in this series of articles to do just that.

Despite the daily attention to military issues, it is striking to me how little those who never served in the military know about it.  After I was already in the Army a few years, my father, who retired after 23 years of military service, met a friend of mine.  He told him that I was at Fort Lewis and went up to Seattle on weekends.  He was surprised and asked, ‘you mean they let them out?’

Since 1975 only around one percent of the population has worn the uniform.  Many have family members or friends who served, but this only gives them a bit more than the basic knowledge the majority of Americans have.  For most, opinions and attitudes toward the military are developed by the news media, TV shows, and movies.  Many of our elected leaders, despite their claims to the contrary, have little more knowledge than the general population and surprisingly few of them have served themselves though they make very important decisions involving the military every day.  Though others have claimed it falsely, there are only four Iraq war veterans in Congress.

This, however, doesn’t seem to keep them from claiming to speak for the military.  The debate about the Iraq ‘surge’ and the debate about the future of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2008 election prompted many on the right to claim ‘you can’t support the troops without supporting the war.’ I served in Iraq and Kuwait during these debates.  I didn’t support the war in Iraq, but I fought as hard as I could in it every day, receiving a Purple Heart in a suicide bombing.  I served with others who did support it and did the same.  Servicemembers do their duty no matter their personal opinion.  Anyone claiming to presume that they know what servicemembers believe doesn’t understand the concept of duty.

And yet, the recent debate on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ centered on conservatives claiming troops don’t want to worry about sharing their ‘foxhole’ with a homosexual.  Our troops haven’t dug ‘foxholes’ in quite a while.  This comment exhibits an opinion based on the stereotypical swaggering, macho draftee of Hollywood films.  The truth is our all-volunteer military today is made of service members that see themselves as military professionals.  They have an opinion about the matter, but once the decision has been made they accept it and won’t be distracted, especially in combat, by such trivial matters as the sexual orientation of their squadmate.  This professionalism was previously exhibited when the military desegregated, despite opposition.  Sixty years later, troops of all colors and genders serve well beside one another.

A closer look at the policies and culture of the U.S. military today shows that it is more progressive than many traditionally think.  There are many lessons progressives can draw on from today’s military, and conservatives’ trust of the military on national security issues should translate to trust on other issues.

The military healthcare system shows that government can do big healthcare well and efficiently; it leads the way on addressing energy independence, efficiency, and the repercussions of climate change; despite its size and controversies, it has shown real commitment to providing economic opportunity; and it has an culture of innovation and learning, among other examples.  It is my hope in this series of articles to point out where the military is exhibiting progressive thinking and what lessons we can draw from the military.

Photo credit: US Army Africa

To Oppose or to Propose?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

France, 15 of September, 2010. The Pension Reform passes in the National Assembly after months of struggle. The obstruction instigated by the left parties leads to one of these cinema-like scenes when the right-oriented President of the Lower House (Bernard Accoyer) decides to suspend the debates, prompting call for his resignation by the Socialists – when not accusing the current government of fascism and a putsch.

The issue of reforming the pension system is in itself a subject of concern for all aging western democracies. France has an almost completely repartition-based system where working citizens contribute a percentage of their wages to the retirement pensions of the previous worker-generation. No need to explain that with the population pyramid, every developed country is facing nowadays, fewer young workers will have to pay for a “papy-boom” generation that is living longer and longer.

But what is also at issue here is the behavior of the opposition party, this vital nerve of every democracy, which faces the “to oppose or to propose” dilemma: How to make needed concessions without having them considered as surrender of principles?

After years of failed attempt at reforms, the French government has proposed extending the retirement contribution years and postponing the retirement age from 60 to 62  by 2018. Even if the Socialists officially accept lengthening the retirement contribution years, they fight against the loss of the symbolic legal age at which you can chose to quit work. The extreme left wing, for its part, is simply denying the reality of the age pyramid: They definitely want to “freeze the counters” up to 40 years of contribution, arguing that people deserve to experience healthy retirement years and that their departure would leave more work to the next generation.

The Socialist opposition clearly decided to apply the “opposing for opposing” strategy, which not only works against their interest, but also prevents any possibility of constructive democratic debates leading to a meaningful compromise.

Such an attitude makes the opposition seem unconstructive and static. At best, it only strengthens the extremes which seem to give voters a clearer choice – even if often extravagant. In the long haul, it weakens democracy not to have opposition parties willing and able to be serious partners in debate and deliberation.

Moreover, crying wolf at every proposition from the party in power turns the opposition into background noise citizens no longer bother to pay attention to. Consequently, it gives the governing party a freer hand in proposing and implementing policies — an opportunity the current French Government did not miss when passing bills against minorities without facing any reaction worthy of being called opposition.

Ultimately, it is up to the voters to reject opposition merely for the sake of opposition, and the extremism it builds. This is not always easy. Strong opposition can provide the appeal of moral clarity and righteous indignation. But it leads nowhere productive. Hard choices are ahead, but they only get harder when opposition parties take on a reflexive opposition stance and make compromise impossible.

Photo credit: marcovdz

The Tea Party is the GOP’s Problem

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Among the many midterm imponderables is this: will the Tea Party have as big an impact on the election as it’s had on the chattering class?

The media obsession with the Tea Party has made it the big political story of the year.  Fox News helped to midwife and validate it, and liberal commentators seem equally fixated on the phenomena, which they view with a mixture of dread and envy. They are forever dreaming of populist uprisings, and when it actually happens, it’s on the wrong end of the ideological spectrum!

But is the Tea Party really a new and genuinely independent expression of conservative populism, or is it something more familiar – the right wing of the Republican Party? A study released yesterday sheds some interesting light on the question.

It’s called Religion and the Tea Party in the 2010 Election, by Robert Jones and Daniel Cox of the Public Religion Research Institute. The study confirms much of what is already known about the Tea Party – its members are generally white, older, more affluent and more male than the population at large. They are very conservative, and as we all know, they have a gimlet-eyed view of government.

But the report also purports to correct some common misconceptions about the movement. Some key findings:

  • One in 11 voters describe themselves as a Tea Party member. That’s a lot, but hardly an irresistible force in America politics. As Jones and Cox note, it’s only half the percentage of voters who identify themselves as Christian conservatives.
  • Despite Dick Armey’s opportunistic attempts to get to the head of the Tea Party parade, the movement is more socially conservative than libertarian, at least on social issues. Its members, for example, are strongly opposed to abortion and gay marriage.
  • Nearly half (47 percent) say they are also part of the religious right, a key GOP constituency that supposedly has gone to ground in recent years.
  • Tea Partiers are overwhelmingly partisan Republicans. Most (76) say they lean Republican and over 80 percent say they plan to vote for GOP candidates in their districts.

This last point is offered as upending conventional wisdom, but it shouldn’t be. Many commentators, including PPI’s own Ed Kilgore, have pointed to the basic compatibility of Tea Party attitudes with those of hard-core GOP conservatives. In backing challenges to GOP moderates, in fact, the Tea Party looks like a looking glass version of the “netroots” progressives who backed Howard Dean in 2004 and Ned Lamont’s primary challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman.

There are some distinctly new flavors in the Tea Party brew, of course. One is an antic Constitutional fundamentalism that yearns to roll back amendments providing for the direct election of Senators and the progressive income tax. And the Tea Party’s decentralized, headless nature means its members really don’t take orders from the GOP hierarchy.

But in general, Tea Partiers look like GOP conservatives, only more so. Not surprisingly, they are disproportionally from the South, the GOP’s geographical and ideological bastion.

So maybe progressives shouldn’t worry too much about the movement. Ultimately, the Tea Party is a Republican, not Democratic, problem. Yes, its members are energized to vote and will turn out in droves in November. But they are also divisive, polarizing and, often, downright weird (Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell) or borderline psychotic (New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino).

If Democrats do as badly as everyone seems to expect in the midterm, it won’t be because of the Tea Party. It will be because independent voters, who put Barak Obama solidly over the top in 2008, have defected to Republican candidates to protest joblessness and the sluggish recovery. Meanwhile, Tea Party passions are pushing Republicans to the nether fringe of conservativism, leaving an abandoned center for progressives to recapture after the election.

Photo credit:  bvcphoto

Don’t Destroy Government, Use It

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Recurrent outbursts of public anger against “big government” are a fixture of American politics. Partly, such sentiments are baked into the cake of America’s classically liberal founding ideas. But as Philip Howard points out, the relentless addition (hardly ever subtraction) of new laws, programs and regulations both bloats government and renders it less and less capable of solving new problems. If the machinery of government is all gummed up, it doesn’t much matter which party is at the controls. No wonder voters get mad, and discouraged.

So Philip is onto something here. Mancur Olson, in The Rise and Decline of Nations, and Jonathan Rauch, in Demosclerosis, explored this phenomenon in depth. So why am I not quite ready to sign onto his manifesto?

One reason is that it has a libertarian ring, in my ears anyway. I can imagine it going down much easier among Tea Partiers than, say, netroots lefties, or even pragmatic, center-left types like me. Yet progressives have, if anything, more reason to worry about the incapacitation of government than conservatives. We actually want to use the damn thing, not just disable it.

Read the entire article in the Daily Beast

Financing Future Growth: How Do We Pay For New Projects?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A National Infrastructure Bank is an idea whose time has come. The politics are tricky, but there is clear recognition from leading public and private sector thinkers that we need to make big investments in infrastructure, and that we need to make those investments in a rational way.

These were the key takeaway points from Friday’s second panel on the question of “Financing Future Growth,” which was part of the Progressive Policy Institute’s Second Annual North American Strategic Leadership Infrastructure Leadership Forum in Washington, DC.

The panelists were: U.S. Representative Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT), Sponsor of National Infrastructure Development Bank Act of 2009 (H.R. 2521); Chris Bertram, Assistant Secretary for Budget and Programs and C.F.O., U.S. Department of Transportation; Leo Hindery, Jr., Investor, Managing Partner of InterMedia Partners VII; former President and CEO of AT&T Broadband; former President, Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI); and Everett Ehrlich, Economist, President of ESC Company; former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. PPI President Will Marshall moderated.

Rep. DeLauro set the tone for the panel by underlining the urgency for doing something big. “We need to be serious about a growth strategy,” DeLauro told a packed audience. “This is not stimulus, this is not recovery, this is whether we can grow and create jobs to compete with the economic power centers of the world. China invests nine percent of its GDP in infrastructure. India invests five percent. We invest less than two percent.”

And yet, Rep. DeLauro’s bill to create a National Infrastructure Bank and turn a chaotic ad-hoc infrastructure appropriations process into a rational national strategy has attracted only 60 co-sponsors – and not a single Republican.

“Resistance is internal to Congress,” said Hindery. “They would give up so much grant and earmark authority. Members are hesitant to see that move into an independent entity.”

Hindery argued that the key was leadership, and that the President wasn’t doing enough of it. “It has to be a stated priority,” he said. “It can’t be a proffered idea with tepid support.”

Ehrlich, who wrote a PPI Policy Memo on how an infrastructure bank should operate, was optimistic that this is an idea whose time has come. “This is a remarkable moment in infrastructure,” he said. “We are finally at a place where all the communities know the current programs are brain-dead…Local planners are wondering where the funds are going to come from, private investors are circling around the periphery of the area, looking for a way in.”

Hindery also noted that both the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable – both of whom have been largely resistant to any form of domestic spending – have come out in favor of an infrastructure bank. However, DeLauro said her Republican colleagues in Congress were not hearing this.

DeLauro highlighted that there is strong public support for making big investments in infrastructure: about 80 percent of Americans say they’d be willing to pay extra for more infrastructure.

Hindery also argued that in order for the proposal to pass, it would need to have a buy-American component, so that they unions would be on board. He also thought that making it explicitly a “jobs bill” would be effective. There was general agreement on this point.

Bertram, speaking for the administration, said that the President was serious about pushing an infrastructure bank. “I think the President is very interested in changing how we talk about these issues.”

DeLauro, who has been introducing legislation to create an infrastructure bank since 1994, was optimistic that the moment for it to pass was rapidly coming.

“We’re facing an economic crisis now, and we’re looking for ways to grow our economy,” said DeLauro. “Infrastructure is one of the pieces that makes sense for national growth. I believe it can be done. It’s not easy, but nothing is easy. And I’ll continue with this for as long as it takes.”

Retooling the American Economy for Jobs, Innovation, and Competitiveness

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

America is adrift and needs leadership to modernize and build a foundation for 21st century competitiveness. And while it’s a long hard to travel, there are at least a few signs of optimism.

Such were the key takeaway points from Friday morning’s panel on the question of “Retooling the American Economy,” which was part of the Progressive Policy Institute’s Second Annual North American Strategic Leadership Infrastructure Leadership Forum in Washington, DC.

The panelists were : Tom Friedman, New York Times Columnist, Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author; Jason Furman, Deputy Director, National Economic Council, White House; Roderick Bennett, Advisor to the General President of the Laborers’ International Union of North America; and John Woolard, CEO, Brightsource Energy. David Wessel, economics editor of the Wall Street Journal moderated.

In general, the panelists agreed that we’re in a difficult spot. We’re falling behind China on infrastructure, on energy, on basic research and development –  just about every measure of investing in a 21st century economy. As Friedman put it, “We can only go so long with a philosophy of dumb as we want to be.”

Part of that dumb-as-we-want-to-be philosophy is an unwillingness on the part of many to admit that government has a key role to play in creating an environment where innovation can thrive, both by making big investments and putting the right incentives in place. The solution to this, of course, is leadership.

“We have an epic lack of faith in government with a capital G, but we have an unchanging love for government at the local level when it means bridge projects and energy projects and broadband projects,” said Furman. “And that’s something you see at the bipartisan level. Some of this means we have a messaging problem, and some of that is bottom-up, pointing out what it all tangibly means.”

“But how you get the snake through the python is a big challenge,” Furman added. “You have to pass the thing through Congress, and the debate will be framed in big government terms.”

Friedman, who was openly critical of the administration’s salesmanship efforts, argued that what was needed was big-picture leadership.

“We need to make it aspirational,” said Friedman.  “That’s what the moon shot was all about. People want nation-building at home. You fly from Shanghai to JFK, and you go from the Jetsons to the Flinstones. People sense that. And the President has never made that the lodestar. He’s never leveraged all that energy.”

Woolard, who heads a large solar energy company, offered a dose of optimism. “We have a lot more projects here in the U.S. than abroad,” he said. “There are good projects, and there’s a lot moving forward.”

“But,” he added, “The thing that scares me most is the longer-term issue. Not enough students are going into engineering. We need to encourage people to go into those disciplines.”

Woolard also described the challenge at hand: In order to stabilize carbon emissions at 450 parts per million by 2050 (a commonly-agreed on target to stem global warming), “we’ve gotta build between 12,000 and 20,000 gigawatts of carbon-free power. That’s a power plant per day. We’ve built gigawatts a week before, but we don’t have the rules yet to get to this objective. We need policy.”

The consensus was that there would need to be a price on carbon. “Capital works itself out with the right rules,” Woolard said. But given the politics of energy, would the political will ever exist?

Here Friedman was an optimist: “We’re absolutely going to have a gas tax and a carbon tax,” he told the audience. “Because we’re going to run out of money, and we will need revenue and when we run into that wall, people will look around and say, what’s the best source? The sad thing is there are 535 members of Congress, and not one will propose this when it is so manifestly in the strategic and economic interest of the country.”

Bennett, whose union represents construction workers, also registered support for a gasoline tax, which he called “the elephant in the room.”

Friedman also offered a “killer app” for economic competitiveness: “An ecosystem of a national renewable standard, a price on carbon, a gasoline tax, higher building efficiency standards,” he said. “Put that ecoystem in place and you get 10,000 green garages trying 10,000 different things. Two of those will be the next green Google and Microsoft. The killer app is the enabling system.”

How to Make an Infrastructure Bank Work

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

When President Obama proposed  a national infrastructure bank on Labor Day, he was short on details. How would such a bank work to give coherence to meeting our infrastructure building needs?

Today, in conjunction with our national conference on infrastructure, PPI is proud to release a new Policy Memo from infrastructure expert Everett Ehlrich about how a national infrastructure bank would work.

In his memo, entitled “A National Infrastructure Bank: A Road Guide to the Destination,” Ehrlich sees five key aspects of a Bank:

  • First, a Bank will evaluate infrastructure needs from an economic, as opposed to an engineering perspective. That is, infrastructure projects must actually be economically sound investments, not bridges to nowhere.
  • Second, a Bank will be able to provide consistent, apples-to-apples comparisons of different infrastructure projects so that policymakers can make more rational decisions about where to allocate infrastructure funds.
  • Third, a Bank will be able to select projects where it can leverage private capital effectively.
  • Fourth, a Bank will provide an alternative to what Ehrlich calls the “Appropriations Merry-Go-Round” – that is, the process by which states and localities put off much-needed repairs in hopes that congressional appropriators will lavish funds on them if only they wait long enough.
  • Fifth, a Bank will encourage localities to think creatively about ways to improve on existing infrastructure use, such as designing traffic optimization algorithms. The bank will be able to support non-structural solutions that can often do just as much for our infrastructure needs as building.

Here’s Ehrlich’s overview for how the bank would work:

Any entity – whether state, local, or federal – would have standing to come to the Bank with a proposal requiring federal assistance.  The Bank would be able to negotiate the level and form of such assistance based on the particulars of each project proposal.  It could offer cash participation or loan guarantees, underwriting or credit subsidies, or financing for a subordinated fund to assure creditors.  Any project requiring federal resources above some dollar threshold (on a credit scoring basis) would have to be approved by the Bank.

Ehrlich will be discussing his memo on Friday at a panel on “Panel: Financing Future Growth: How Do We Pay For New Projects?,” as part of the 2nd Annual North America Strategic Infrastructure Leadership Forum, co-sponsored by the Progressive Policy Institute.

In Defense of Jon Stewart’s Million Moderate March

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Last Monday, I shared my optimism that in Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” and Michael Bloomberg’s funding of moderate candidates, there was reason to hope that the center might hold after all, and maybe even become vital.

Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education Brainstorm blog, Laurie Essig had a very different take. Where I see a vital center, she sees a “muddled middle” that is “in fact continuing to represent the interests of corporations and corporate-controlled media against the interests of the majority of Americans.”

It’s worth spending a few minutes with Essig’s deconstruction of the so-called muddled middle, because it reflects a certain unfortunate way of thinking about the political center. It also offers an opportunity to defend what’s vital about the vital center.

Essig argues that: “The first thing that is clear is that the Muddled Middle wishes to merge the Left and the Right as ‘the same’”

I’m not quite sure where Professor Essig finds this clarity. I cannot think of a single political moderate who sees or even wishes to see the Left and the Right as being “the same.” They clearly represent very different political ideologies. This much is obvious to anyone with even half a brain.

But they do share one troubling similarity: they both view the world in black and white terms, and both equate any form of compromise with surrender.

In Essig’s view, and the view of many on the political far left, “the world’s greediest corporations continue to highjack our democracy.” Anybody (i.e. the moderates) who does not believe we are locked in an existential good-versus-evil struggle on the behalf of poor working class folks against the powerful interests is therefore complicit with the political right. If only the world were so black and white, it might be comforting to be sure that one was on the side of righteousness. But nothing is every that simple.

In my mind, the wisdom of the vital center is the ability to recognize two big things. First, that while the far Left and the far Right are fundamentally different in what they believe, a politics that forces everybody to choose one extreme or the other is a politics of stalled gridlock, brutal warfare, or both. We have a country to govern, and that country is quite divided, but also largely moderate. And if there is a true American tradition, it is pragmatism.

Second, the world is a complex place, and it rarely fits neatly into pure black and white. Individuals, corporations, and governments are all capable of both good and evil, of both brilliance and stupidity, of both innovation and inefficiency – often at the same time. To me, a sign of wisdom is being willing to accept this complexity, and to be humble about it. It is to be open to the possibility that one has not, in fact, figured it all out, and to be willing to experiment.

To borrow from Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “Problems will always torment us, because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.” (The Vital Center, p. 254)

So sign me up for Jon Stewart’s Million Moderate March. I’ll be there, with an open mind, eager to hear what everyone has to say.

photo credit: Dale Basler

No Retreat on Health Care

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s only taken six months for President Obama’s landmark health reform bill to go from stupendous historic achievement to political blunder. That anyway is the fast-congealing consensus among pundits who follow the polls.

Count me as skeptical. Even if health care doesn’t poll well now, that doesn’t mean Obama was wrong to make it a top priority. But, in an atmosphere colored by public anger over bailouts and a sluggish economic recovery, there’s no doubt that the bill, for now at least, is more of an albatross for the president than an asset.

According to pollster Douglas Schoen, 81 percent of independents express concern about a federal takeover of health care, and nearly three-quarters say it’s important that candidates back a repeal of the law. He calls health care an “unambiguous disaster” for Obama.

And Bill Galston reports on a new Gallup survey that finds voters by 56-43 disapprove of the health bill.

An AP poll reveals much confusion about health reform. More than half the public wrongly believes the bill will raise taxes this year, and a quarter think it sets up bureaucratic “death panels” to decide who gets or doesn’t get care.

No wonder Obama hit the hustings yesterday to clear the record and remind people of why they wanted health care reform in the first place.

But it’s clear, right, that Obama made a mistake in pushing so hard for health care reform and it distracted him from what most Americans care about, namely, fixing the economy?  Actually, I don’t think it’s clear at all.

First, Obama pulled out all the stops to keep the economy from sliding into the abyss, but gets very little credit for it. On the contrary, his steps to rescue financial institutions are even less popular than health care, and his stimulus package doesn’t fare much better.

More fundamentally, presidents have very limited tools for reversing economic downturns. It’s not clear what more Obama could have done — or gotten a deeply polarized Congress to agree to do — even if they spent every waking hour thinking about the economy.

And let’s suppose Obama had followed the pundit’s advice, and put off health care until the economy recovered. Well, that would mean taking up health care in 2011 at the earliest. But how likely is it that the president could pass an historic health care reform after the midterm election, when his party is expected to suffer big losses and maybe even lose control of the House of Representatives?

Maybe the midterm will produce a new crop of GOP moderates, eager to pass universal health care in defiance of the party’s leadership, not to mention the Tea Party’s feral legions, but I doubt it.

The historical record is very clear on one point: the time for presidents to wrack up big legislative accomplishments comes early in their term, when their political and public support is at highest ebb. If Obama had instead waited and tried to husband his political capital for a later push, he would have had a lot less to spend.

Besides, the bad economy overshadows everything else. If we had six percent unemployment, people might feel better about health reform too. And there’s a good chance that once its provisions actually kick in, reform will grow in popularity.

But even if it doesn’t, Obama still did the right thing. America today doesn’t need artful dodgers in the White House; we need leaders willing to take on the hard cases. That inevitably offends powerful interests and voting groups. In fact, presidents who leave office about as popular as when they come in probably haven’t done very much.

So progressives should take heart, and not try to back away from health care reform. It was difficult, it was imperfect, but it was a moral and economic necessity to cover the uninsured and start getting runaway medical costs under control. It was the very rarest thing in contemporary U.S. politics — an authentic act of political leadership – and no amount of second-guessing and poll-driven punditry can change that.

photo credit:  apoxapox

“Obama’s Wars” and the November Election

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Sure, everyone knows that this election season’s foil is the economy, stupid.  Much like 2008, no issue will dominate voters’ minds more than the relative emptiness of their pocketbooks.  But that quiet scraping you hear in the distance, my friends, is the sound of national security trying to claw its way into this year’s election.  Thanks to Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars”, it just might get a chip in the game.

Woodward’s book, previewed by articles today in the Washington Post (Woodward’s employer) and New York Times, apparently focuses on the administration’s decision-making process throughout the three-month Afghanistan strategy review that took place in late 2009.  The full volume isn’t due out until next week, but suffice it to say that the papers have gravitated to the more salacious details:

— ZING! Petraeus thinks Alexrod’s a spin doctor!
— BAM! Obama doesn’t listen to his generals!
— DOINK! Karzai is manic depressive and pops pills!

… or something.

With an election just weeks away, this is chum in shark-infested conservative waters.

But POW!  After digging past the juicy headlines, it’s evident that there’s a deeper message here, too: The progressive base, feeling like an abandoned date on prom-night over Obama’s Afghanistan decision and hardly motivated to support Democrats this fall, might just be heartened to learn of the president’s refusal to write the generals a blank check.

And if that means jazzing up more progressive election volunteers until election day, it might explain why the White House would grant Woodward such extensive access in the first place.  I mean, they didn’t let him sit down with the president to make them look bad.

Sheep and Goats

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Yesterday, I observed that we are getting to the point where all the speculation about individual 2010 contests will begin to yield to hard data, and the actual battlegrounds will emerge.

A good example of how that might be happening is provided by new polls from PPP of two Senate races that have been ostensibly very similar, in WI and CA. In both of these blue states well-regarded but always-vulnerable progressive Democratic U.S. senators are under attack from amply-financed Republican “newcomers.”

But according to PPP, Russ Feingold is suddenly in deep trouble against Ron Johnson, while Barbara Boxer is expanding her lead against Carly Fiorina. Both these polls represent a shift by PPP from registered voter to likely voter samples, making the trends interesting measurements of the so-called “enthusiasm gap” afflicting Democrats.

According to an account by its partner DailyKos, PPP finds the “enthusiasm gap” in WI to be “one of the most severe” in the country, with Johnson’s 1-point lead among 2008 voters ballooning to 11 points among likely 2010 voters.

But in California, Boxer’s 49-40 lead among RVs in July is a virtually unchanged 50-41 lead among likely voters today. More specifically, Boxer’s support among Democrats remains very strong, and as PPP’s Tom Jensen notes:

[T]he simple reality is that Fiorina has not proven to be a particularly appealing candidate to California voters. 42% of them see her unfavorably with only 34% rating her positively. Republicans like her, Democrats dislike her almost as much, and independents are slightly negative toward her. Again, not the formula that’s going to get a Republican elected to the Senate from California.

One other factor that should be noted here is that Boxer is just about the only vulnerable Democrat seeking reelection in a state where the majority of voters still approve of Barack Obama’s performance. His approval is 53/42, and by and large the folks that like Obama are supporting Boxer- California’s one of the last frontiers left where he’s not a drag.

Interestingly, PPP also shows Jerry Brown leading Meg Whitman among likely voters by a 47-42 margin in the CA governor’s race, even though Brown is just now getting around to running television ads.

Now it may be that PPP’s current polling in either WI or CA could prove to be an outlier; it happens to all pollsters on occasion. It’s also true that Russ Feingold has a habit of getting into trouble in his re-election campaigns, only to eventually recover and win.

But whether or not these two races in particular are examples, we should soon begin to see disparities in the host of “close races” we’ve all been watching, and separate the sheep from the goats.

This article is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist

Photo credit: Kat Clay

Empower the American People, Not Special Interests, to Bankroll Elections

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Eight months after a landmark Supreme Court ruling lifted decades-long limits on corporate and union spending in elections, the 2010 midterm election promises to be the most expensive – and most secretive – on record.

In a radical departure from previous high court jurisprudence, the decision in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission extended full personhood freedom-of-speech rights to corporations , allowing them to spend unlimited funds to advocate the election or defeat of candidates at any level. It is little surprise, therefore, that analysts are predicting political ad spending to balloon to $4.2 billion this year, fully twice the level spent in 2008.

In the absence of FEC enforcement of longstanding disclosure norms and the failure of the DISCLOSE legislation to garner 60 votes in the Senate, millions of dollars in electioneering ads are being spent for or against candidates by unknown players who are unaccountable to either the candidates or the public. A recent study issued last week by the watchdog group Public Citizen found that less than one-third of independent groups receiving electioneering donations have revealed their donors this election; virtually every such group did so in 2004 and 2006. Small wonder that eight in ten voters roundly condemn the Supreme Court ruling in opinion polls.

With these sobering changes in special interest spending and disclosure comes an opportunity for Congress to shift the election year debate from issues – on which there is little hope of consensus between the parties – to process. The political imperative for such a change is clear, as liberals and Tea Partiers alike are outspoken in their rejection of the current system of corporate special interest-funded elections. While progressive support of campaign finance reform has long been assumed, Republican strategist Mark McKinnon recently observed, “There is a conventional myth that Republican voters are opposed to campaign finance reform, but [recent] research shows that Republican voters, like all other voters, believe our system of electing representatives is irreparably broken.”

It is encouraging news that the Committee on House Administration is planning to vote this Thursday on the Fair Elections Now Act. The bill offers a sweeping overhaul of congressional campaign finance rules. It would take require that participating candidates say no to special interest contributions and instead raise money in $100-or-less donations directly from their constituents. Qualifying House candidates who can collect at least 1,500 such donations in-state would be eligible to receive competitive matching funds with which to run a viable campaign. The legislation is supported by 164 cosponsors in the U.S. House and 26 cosponsors Senate.

For Democrats concerned with leveling the electoral playing field to allow more voices to enter the debate, the appeal of Fair Elections is clear. For Republicans opposed to old fashioned limits-based regulation of ‘free speech’ but who are equally fed up with the never-ending hunt for special interest dollars, Fair Elections represents a free market-oriented ‘more speech’ approach, enabling non-millionaire and non-special interest candidates to compete against those with big money. Recent surveys confirm broad public support for Fair Elections across every political group.

Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United came down, President Obama roundly condemned the decision  in his State of the Union address on the grounds that “American elections [should not] be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests.” Now is Congress’ opportunity to make good on their objection and to ensure that American elections are bankrolled by the American people.

Photo credit: Nick Ares

No Compromise from Obama on Bush Tax Cuts, Except Dividends

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama stood his ground on his tax plan during Monday’sCNBC town hall forum, arguing that he can’t make the math work for both keeping the deficit in check and giving away tax breaks to the richest two percent of Americans.  When asked about possibilities for compromise, including cutting rates for households with incomes between $250,000 and $1 million, Obama didn’t flinch and stuck to his talking points.

So it sounds like the President’s position on the Bush tax cuts is one he’s taking to the people on Election Day, rather than taking to the Hill for negotiation and deal-making.  He also brushed off a question about a payroll tax holiday, so it doesn’t sound like that idea will be on the table between now and November either.

Obama did make a strong statement about keeping a portion of the Bush tax cuts that would apply to the wealthiest Americans: reduced rates on income from corporate dividends.  He emphasized that he has proposed a 20 percent cap on both dividends and capital gains taxes

If the Bush tax cuts expire without this change, the highest income brackets would pay 20 percent on capital gains, but dividends would be taxed at marginal rates of 39 percent for the top bracket.  So when Obama mentions this 20 percent cap on dividends, he’s actually proposing a sliver of compromise in the tax cut debate. This appears to be the only part of the Bush tax cuts that he’s willing to extend for the top 3 percent of taxpayers.

I have to think that emphasizing the dividend cuts was one of the key messaging items the White House planned for this forum today.  First, it’s CNBC, so the business and investment audience is going to like the idea.

Second, it’s a cut that Republicans can’t possibly oppose, except as part of their pouting-in-the-corner strategy of demanding all the Bush tax cuts or nothing.

Third and most significant is that this isn’t a new position for the administration, but it’s new that Obama himself is talking about it.

It’s the first time I know of that Obama has really spoken out loud about this issue, even though it was included in hisbudget plan for 2011.  The only time other the administration has said anything about that proposal was when Treasury Secretary TimGeithner mentioned it on CNBC in July.

On the merits, the idea is a good one.  There are some decent arguments for taxing dividends at the same rate as capital gains to prevent the kind of investment bias that might result from taxing one at nearly twice the rate as the other, as I have briefly argued before. And because the bulk of total dividend payments go to those in the top brackets, their tax rates have a disproportionate impact on investment incentives.

Congress has for the most part ignored dividends in the debate about extending the Bush tax cuts, and the administration has done nothing to inject it into the discussion.  Until today, that is.

It will be interesting to see whether the White House actually pursues a legislative push for this cut, or if this is merely defensive posturing without follow-up to appear more business-friendly before a business audience.  Since it doesn’t have any real champions in Congress, my guess is that we may not hear much more about it, unless a prominent member or two decide to latch on to the idea as a moderate position and call the President’s bluff.

It’s Time to Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A few events over the last few weeks continue to highlight the importance of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a policy the Obama administration is on the verge of repealing – that is, provided members of his Senate caucus don’t flip out before Tuesday, when the Senate Armed Services Committee is set to vote on the measure in the defense authorization bill and move it to a full Senate vote.  The swing votes in committee may be Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (Rs-ME), who have said they’re unsure how they’ll vote.

DADT was always meant as a transitional policy from the Clinton era, born out of a fight the 42nd president picked (and essentially lost) with the military brass.  It’s time to move our military into the 21st century — Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has endorsed its end, as has Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen.  So has Colin Powell.

I worked for the Pentagon for about five years, and I know and worked with homosexual members of the armed forces.  Their orientation never affected their ability to serve, or their subordinates’ ability to respect them.  Countries including Britain, Denmark, and Israel have all realized that being gay and being in the military is a simply a non-issue.

Last week, Jonathan Hopkins, an Army captain honorably discharged this August for being gay, had this to say in the NYT following his forced separation from the military services:

In my case, after the military learned from others that I was gay, I served for 14 more months during investigations and administrative actions to discharge me. Everyone knew, so, essentially, I lived for more than a year in a post-D.A.D.T. work environment.

…

Amid all of that, the unit continued to function and I continued to be respected for the work I did. Many, from both companies I commanded, approached me to say that they didn’t care if I was gay — they thought I was one of the best commanders they’d ever had. And unbeknownst to me, many had guessed I was probably gay all along. Most didn’t care about my sexuality. I was accepted by most of them, as was my boyfriend, and I had never been happier in the military. Nothing collapsed, no one stopped talking to me, the Earth spun on its axis, and the unit prepared to fight another day.

John Nagl, president of the bipartisan CNAS, commented on Hopkins, his former charge, in Defense News:

Jonathan is the third combat veteran I personally know who has left the Army under the terms of DADT. Collectively, they represent almost a decade of combat experience, a big handful of Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars, service as aide-de-camps to general officers and as platoon leaders and company     commanders in combat, and the investment of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. They have offered blood, sweat, and tears in defense of a nation that discriminates against them for no good reason.

This policy must end.

The cause has even received the attention of Lady Gaga, heretofore known as the spokeswoman of our times, who called for an end DADT at a rally in Collins’ Maine. She’s the most followed person on Twitter, and if she can motivate a few fans to show up, Tweet, and call the Senator, it might just make a difference

The House has already voted to repeal this highly discriminatory policy, and the Senate hangs in the balance.  If the issue is left to the next Congress, there’s no telling if a more conservative Senate would ever get around to it, which is why tomorrow’s vote is crucial. With the rise of the Tea Party and general rightward slant of the conservative movement today, it’s little wonder that Senator Collins is gun-shy about reiterating her support of a DADT repeal.  One hopes she musters the courage to do what’s right.

Photo credit: Enrico Fuente

Lashed to the Mast

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Weeks before the November elections, leaders of the Republican Party’s increasingly dominant right wing are spending nearly as much time fretting over the potential squeamishness of their own party about implementing a radical agenda as they are ensuring they get the opportunity to enact one.

In a CNN interview yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint, the one-time kooky loner who’s now a Very Big Dog in the GOP, said the GOP would be “dead” if it didn’t keep its promises to repeal health care reform, balance the federal budget and radically reduce spending. Remember he’s the guy who thinks Social Security and Medicare have ensnared Americans in socialism, and likes to call public schools “government schools.”

Another fringe figure who’s suddenly become very relevant, congressman Steve King of Iowa, is frantic in his fears that a Republican House would fail to shut down the government as part of a strategy to repeal health reform. Indeed, he’s asking would-be Speaker John Boehner to sign a “blood oath” to include a health reform repeal in every single appropriations bill, which would have the effect of shutting down the government, just as Republicans tried to do, unsuccessfully, in 1995, in order to impose a budget on Bill Clinton.

This is a sideshow well worth watching. People like DeMint and King are trying to lash their fellow Republicans to the mast of their ship and make them immune to the siren song of the massive popularity of the public programs and commitments they aim to attack: Medicare, Social Security, federal support for educational opportunity, environmental protection, and on and on. It’s an interesting approach on the brink of what many expect to be a big Republican electoral victory, and says a lot about the gap between what Republicans are campaigning on and how they actually intend to govern when in office.

This piece is cross-posted at the Democratic Strategist

Photo credit: Mark Hyre