issue: Politics

Kabuki Conference Buys Time on Fannie and Freddie

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The GSE conference at Treasury today included plenty of big names and good thoughts about the lingering question of how to restructure Fannie and Freddie before releasing them back into the wild.  But one thing missing from the agenda was a sense of urgency.  The conference wasn’t intended to move GSEs up on the agenda right now; it was simply a bit of theater to defuse the issue for a few more months, giving the Administration more time to kick some hard choices down the road.

Everyone knows we still need to do something about Fannie and Freddie.  The problem for Geithner is that everyone keeps talking about it.  The editorial chatter about GSEs is gaining momentum (after all, there’s only so much Steven Slater coverage even August can handle).  The New York Times ran two op-eds last weekend (good and not-so-good), former Treasury Secretary Paulson weighed in on the Post’s opinion page, and think-tank proposals are popping up all over, especially from folks like Don Marron who want to shrink or privatize the role of Fannie and Freddie in lending markets.

So Secretary Geithner did what any good politician would do. He co-opted the debate to keep it from growing beyond his control.  By inviting differing voices to vent their opinions in front of the cameras, Geithner got to look like he was on top of the situation and neutralize the situation for now with a concluding pleasantry that “it’s safe to say there’s no clear consensus yet on how best to design a new system.”  Thanks for that, Tim.  I guess we shouldn’t hold our breaths for “consensus” anytime soon, huh?

With elections weeks away and the crippled housing market still relying on the dual crutches of Fannie and Freddie to move forward at all, it’s no surprise the Administration and Congress are not falling over themselves to begin the fight for a specific reform plan.  Geithner has said the Administration plans to release and administration proposal in January (well after the elections), and the tone of today’s conference was consistent with that schedule.  For anyone who bothered to tune in today (and managed to stay awake), the message from the Administration was this: we know it’s important, and we’ll get around to it eventually . . . maybe once we get back from that Gulf-coast beach trip the President wants us all to take.

Robert Gates, Progressive Conservative

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Secretary of Defense Robert GatesDefense Secretary Robert Gates makes an unlikely progressive hero. A holdover from the Bush administration, Gates is an ex-spy and button-down conservative who keeps a portrait of President Eisenhower behind his desk. Yet he’s also warned against the “militarization” of U.S. foreign policy, forced the armed services to adapt to untraditional modes of warfare, and axed major weapons programs.

Republicans like to posture as the scourge of big government, but they’ve long been AWOL in the battle to discipline the biggest, most bloated bureaucracy of them all: the Pentagon. Not so with Gates, who has taken Ike’s farewell warning about “the military-industrial complex” to heart.

Even as he’s presided over America’s wars, Gates has sought to restrain military spending. He has canceled dozens of non-essential programs, saving taxpayers over $300 billion, and has ordered his department to find another $100 billion in administrative savings over the next five years. Going where others have feared to tread, Gates has targeted soaring military health-care cuts. And he’s promised to thin the ranks of top military commanders, whose numbers have mushroomed all out of proportion to recent increases in troop strength.

All this has drawn predictable fire from conservative hawks, for whom any cut in defense spending apparently signals an ominous weakening of national will. However, they’ve found it hard to make the usual “soft on defense” charge stick to George W. Bush’s tough-minded former Pentagon chief.

Some liberals, apprehensive over the possibility of deep cuts in domestic and entitlement programs once unemployment rates fall, want Gates to go a lot further. But until the United States is in a position to withdraw most of its troops from the Middle East and Central Asia, that’s not likely to happen. As PPI’s Jim Arkedis has documented, the truly big driver of Pentagon costs is manpower. To get the kind of military spending reductions many doves would like to see would require major changes in U.S. foreign policy – not just nips and tucks in this weapons system or that, or administrative reforms. That’s hard to do in the middle of two wars and a global counterinsurgency campaign against Salafist extremists.

But as Gates recognizes, defense will have to make a substantial contribution to America’s coming fiscal retrenchment. He’s offering credible reforms that will promote efficiency and reduce needless redundancy and waste, and, frankly, provide the administration with political cover against the GOP’s ritual claims that Democrats want to eviscerate the nation’s defenses.

All that may not win Gates many cheers at the next netroots convention. But this is a clear instance in which Obama’s “post-partisan” penchant for reaching across political divides has served him, and the nation, well.

On Gibbs v. the Professional Left

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I returned yesterday from an overseas vacation to find Washington embroiled in furious controversy over Robert Gibbs’s gibes at the “professional left.” Somehow, the shock waves from this momentous development had failed to register in Corsica, which may be a gorgeous, sun-splashed rock in the Mediterranean, but is hopelessly apathetic about U.S. politics.

Fortunately for slackers like me, Washington’s chattering class is too busy for vacations. And cable TV never rests, keeping the vital discourse of democracy going even as Americans frolic heedlessly on beaches, lakes and mountains. Well, the fun’s over for me, so I might as well wade into the fray between the frazzled White House Press Secretary and his netroots tormentors.

For starters, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy to Gibbs, for whom watching cable TV is an occupational hazard. Too much of a bad thing, is, well, bad and it’s only human for Gibbs to vent about the ideological purism of talk show anchors and lefty bloggers who imagine that most Americans are pining for a full-throated liberal avenger in the White House. Real-life politics is nothing like The West Wing.

And Democrats might as well have it out now, the summer of their economic discontent, rather than, say, in October on the eve of the midterm. One truly silly argument is that Gibb’s criticisms of the administration’s “base” could alienate them and cause them to stay home on election day. In the first place, netroots types aren’t really the Democratic Party’s base.

They are a subset of liberals, who are themselves outnumbered by moderates and conservatives in the party. And they love to be attacked, because it validates their rather inflated sense of political self-importance. The worst thing you can do to the netroots is to ignore them.

In fact, every Democratic President in recent memory has been flayed by the hard left for lapses from orthodoxy. That is especially true of Franklin Roosevelt, the President many of today’s disappointed liberals say they wish Obama would be more like.

Like Obama, FDR was called a tool of Wall Street, a trimmer, an opportunist. He was bitterly assailed for trying to rescue and restore the free enterprise system rather than replacing it with central economic planning.

This drove leading liberal New Dealers like Rexford Tugwell and Harold Ickes to distraction. Here’s Tugwell:

 

“They [FDR’s liberal critics] are like Chinese warriors who decide battles, not by fighting, but by desertion…They rush to the aid of any liberal victor, and then proceed to stab him in the back when he fails to perform the mental impossibility of subscribing unconditionally to their dozen or more conflicting principles.” (Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, 414)

And Ickes had some equally choice words for the perfectabilian demands of his fellow liberals:

“That so-called liberals spend so much time trying to expose fellow liberals to the sneering scorn of those who delight to have their attention called to clay feet…I get very tired of the smug self-satisfaction, the holier-than-thou attitude, the sneering meticulousness of men and women with whose outlook on economic and social questions I often regretfully find myself in accord. It seems to be a fact that a reformer would rather hold up to ridicule another reformer because of some newly discovered fly speck than he would to clean out Tammany Hall. Sometimes even the fly speck is imaginary.” (Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, 413-414)

Gibbs has a point when he says that liberals undervalue Obama’s major political achievements. On the big matters that really count – the breakthrough on universal health care, the financial regulatory bill, getting out of Iraq on time, and placing liberal women on the Supreme Court (including the Court’s first Hispanic member) – Obama unquestionably has moved the needle in a progressive direction. But if history is any guide, it won’t matter – he’s still going to get pilloried by the congenitally insatiable left for something (For failing to close Gitmo, or embrace gay marriage, or demand amnesty for immigrants, etc.)

The fundamental problem with the left’s carping about Obama is the underlying assumption that their views are shared by a majority of the country: If only he would fight harder for structural transformations in American life, the latent progressive majority would spring into being and rally behind him!

This is sheer fantasy. If the country has moved in any direction over the past two years, it is to the center, and perhaps even the center right (excepting Republicans, who have surged lemming-like off the ideological cliff). What liberals see as overly tepid moves to restructure and stimulate the economy a healthy chunk of the increasingly cranky electorate, especially independences, see as overweening government intrusion.

The party’s leftists are obviously within their rights to criticize Obama when they think he deviates from the true path, just as centrists and conservatives are. And the dialectic between the President’s essential political pragmatism and left-wing fundamentalists is probably a healthy thing. It could force Obama to articulate more clearly the overarching philosophical framework that informs a Presidency that otherwise seems to proceed on the logic of serial pragmatism.

But ultimately, left leaning Democrats aren’t going to find a better horse to ride. And the more they flog Obama, the worse Democrats are likely to do this November.

Why Progressives Must Embrace the Robust Optimism of American Exceptionalism

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute
The Hacketts Gospel Singing Shed
The Shed -- Dermott, Arkansas

Alexis de Tocqueville would understand “The Hacketts Gospel Singing Shed.”

Located in Dermott, Arkansas on the edge of a small cotton farm, “The Shed,” as locals call it, is a venue for gospel singers and fans to gather for song, worship, and fellowship. In the 1830s, Tocqueville toured America and witnessed the very sort of religiosity and voluntarism that motivated the Hackett family to transform a tractor shed into what has become a local community hub. The young Frenchman’s resulting sociological masterpiece, Democracy in America, explains “The Shed” and offers some timeless lessons about America’s uniquely ambitious political culture –
lessons Democrats looking for keys to ending the Great Recession ought to consider.

During his travels, Tocqueville recognized how republican ideals and cheap plentiful land had produced a profoundly optimistic, democratic, individualistic, entrepreneurial, and decidedly populist people. His shorthand for the differences between the U.S. and Western European political cultures – “American Exceptionalism”— remains a handy and useful concept progressives should both heed and employ.

“Exceptionalism” is not a Limbagh-esqe a priori verification of America’s supreme awesomeness. Rather, exceptionalism cuts both ways. The very populist impulses both bred the civil rights movement and spawned the Tea Party.

In the same way, American individualism is responsible for both a vibrant economic growth, a broad middle class, technological innovation, AND an anemic welfare state, concomitant high poverty and comparatively crime rates.

In sum, exceptionalism is not chest-thumpin’ We-Will-Rock-You, rah-rah USA cornpone; Tocqueville would recognize “The Hacketts Gospel Singing Shed” by echoing Denny Green’s infamous postgame rant, “They are who we thought they were!”

American Exceptionalism not only explains “The Shed.” It should also inform Democratic policy responses, both in substance and style, to the Great Recession.

Progressives understandably shy away from a term that seemingly reeks of parochialism and sounds like a potential first and middle name for one of Sarah Palin’s children. Instead of “exceptional” substitute “difference” and then wonder how and why Germans accept 8 percent unemployment as normal, middle class Danes ride bikes to work instead of drive cars, or Canadian cities are so neat-and-tidy. For better or for worse, the American “difference” is real.

Economic recoveries are like snowflakes—no two are ever the same. This should remind us that the “dismal science” is no hard science at all. To hear Paul Krugman or the Cato Institute’s certitude, however, one would hardly realize economists are making little more than highly educated guesses.

Ironically, even as partisan economists claim all-knowing prescience their field is thankfully moving away from technocratic certainty and toward ambiguity. While it is humbling (and quite a bit scary) to accept mysterious, unpredictable, and ultimately unknowable economic forces control our material fates, this is exactly why the American difference matters.

Modern progressive economic policy should combine short-term fiscal stimulus and long-term deficit reduction with rhetorical and policy faith in the American character. While sound policy matters, more and more economists realize that intangibles and emotions often spell the difference between recovery and double dip recessions.

The American difference really matters. Four hundred years of history (including the colonial era) proves that American optimism, individualism, entrepreneurial spirit, and waves of eager immigrants will eventually lead to robust economic recovery. Talk of decline, power moving east, and a new “normal” are reminiscent of the early 1990s when observers claimed Japan and Germany would overtake American economic leadership. If memory serves, the 1990s were fairly good economic times.

President Obama has provided such leadership. Time and again he has extolled the American work ethic and unique character; it is Congressional leaders and the liberal punditocracy, however, who are out of tune with the great resilience of the American tradition., Congressional leaders – who too often dwell myopically on technocratic details, medium versus big stimulus or extending unemployment benefits – fail to convey the most important ingredient for economic policy success: sunny optimism and a profound belief in an American difference.

All peoples in all lands hope, innovate, and work for a better future. Americans do so in their own unique, different, and yes even “exceptional” way. The route of this mess takes good policy but requires bold, optimistic, and a quintessentially American leadership. It is the sort of simple yet profound wisdom that a Frenchman; the folks of Dermott, Arkansas; and skinny kid with big ears and a funny name all know in their bones.

photo credit: Jeff Bloodworth

The Three Little Dutch Boys

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The economic news out of Washington this week has an eerie ring of déjà vu: Congress just passed an emergency spending bill, the Fed is buying debt securities to keep the economy from sliding toward collapse, and the Administration announced it is committing billions of dollars to mortgage relief for homeowners facing foreclosure. To be sure, none of these actions has the scale or urgency of the initial responses to the financial crisis, but they are perfect examples of the policy philosophy that has dominated both economic policy since the crisis: a focus on playing defense, rather than offense.

What we saw this week were Congress, the Administration, and the Federal Reserve continuing their roles as the three little Dutch boys of the American economy, sticking fingers in the dyke to save the country from disaster. The rhetoric of stimulus is oversold and misplaced: Washington’s fiscal and monetary policies have essentially all been economic tourniquets that are better characterized as containment measures than stimulus. The Fed is shifting into quantitative easing, but only as much as necessary to fight off deflation. Congress is sending aid to the states, but only enough to keep them from having to lay off teachers. Treasury and HUD are providing assistance to the housing market, but only enough to keep people from being kicked out of their houses.

Over and over since the crisis, policy makers in both parties have remained optimistic that the U.S. economy was inherently dynamic and resilient enough that we could rely on growth to materialize from somewhere, as long as we put a solid floor underneath to contain the damage and prevent more negative shocks to the economy. Given the huge amounts being spent and our country’s history from past recessions, this was not an unreasonable approach at the time, especially for those with any concern for fiscal responsibility.

So far, the containment strategy has proved extremely successful in keeping us from sinking into a full-blown depression. However, at this point, we still have farther to go on the path to a sustainable recovery than most economists and politicians had hoped. This morning we got the new jobless numbers, and they aren’t good.  Wall Street was hoping for better news, and the markets’ negative reaction only compounds the growing anxiety (even allowing for the low volume in August, when stocks historically are more vulnerable to bad news). The extended string of bad economic news, coupled with a lack of credible cheerleading from Washington, is creating a palpable crisis of confidence in our economy and our leadership.

While the Fed is signaling between the lines that it may be prepared for stronger action, Congress and the President seem to be headed in the other direction. Campaign politics have lawmakers talking more about contractionary fiscal discipline than taking any new actions to boost the economy. Even in the debate about extending the Bush tax cuts, the options being considered do not include anything stimulative compared to the status quo. Congress has painted itself into a corner by waiting until taxes are automatically set to go up if it fails to act, and now it will likely be forced to extend most or all of them simply to avoid a contractionary fiscal outcome. Again, playing economic defense.

It’s time we think seriously about shifting gears and talking about reasonable stimulus again, instead of waiting for the next hole to plug. As Will Marshall has argued here, keeping public spending and debt under control is critically important, and Democrats need to talk openly about how we prepare for the day of reckoning when the spending claw-backs kick in, since Republicans have lost all credibility on fiscal discipline. However, growth is still the most urgent concern; the signals from bond-market vigilantes are telling us that, as Stan Collander argues well today.

There is a still a place in the debate for looking into additional stimulus, both on the tax side and with additional cost-effective spending. For example, public investment in infrastructure can be used to leverage private capital off the sidelines as well by making the private sector an active partner in stimulus efforts. Instead of continuing to put fingers in the dyke, we need to be more proactive in finding the companies in the private sector who want to rebuild the dyke, and put people and money to work again.

Photo Credit: OliBac’s Photostream

How the Military is Leading the Way on Energy Security

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As a U.S. Army veteran I am used to dealing with the military, an organization that, by necessity, takes swift and decisive action when necessary, despite the fact that many see it as a conservative organization that is resistant and slow to change. In Washington, I am becoming used to dealing with another organization that is much more conservative and even more resistant and slower: the United States Senate. I am proud to say that the U.S. military is once again taking decisive action on energy independence and security, as well as addressing the military repercussions of climate change. The military is taking action where the United States Congress will not.

On July 27 I attended the White House Forum on Energy Security along with a group of veterans from Operation Free, a nationwide coalition of military veterans from all eras and ranging from Privates and Airmen to Generals and Admirals – all of whom support the goal of energy independence, security, and addressing the national security repercussions of climate change.

We have collectively been touring and speaking throughout the country and in Washington, D.C. in support of breaking our dependence on largely foreign oil and pushing Congress to take real steps toward a comprehensive clean energy climate plan. We have come to support the American Power Act developed through a bipartisan effort by Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham with Senator Joseph Lieberman and cooperation from the White House.

July 27 was supposed to be the day that the Senate finally took real action on the issue we have all been working hard for over the past year. It didn’t happen. As we all got on airplanes throughout the country in high spirits, something was happening on Capitol Hill: nothing.

By the time we hit ground in Washington, D.C. we learned that everything had changed. The Senate didn’t have the sixty votes needed to proceed to an up-or-down vote on the bill. We went to the Hill again to meet with fence-sitting Senators and their staff. The opinion we encountered there was disappointing, but not surprising: we need to do something about the issues of energy security, energy independence, and climate change, but we’re not going to do anything now.

Some, echoing Republican sentiment, said the issue hadn’t been discussed enough yet, that the Senate process of debate and hearings needs to be completed, that it would force them to choose ‘winners and losers’ and they are not ready to do that.

Hadn’t been discussed enough? We’ve been talking about energy security and independence since the 1970s. Other countries are taking action while we are being left behind. The CIA includes repercussions of climate change and our dependence on foreign fossil energy in its assessments. The State Department does as well.

Now the U.S. military is taking serious steps to address the issue. It devoted an entire section of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report (p. 84) to responding to climate change issues.  Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has expressed a clear vision of a force independent of fossil fuels. The military is taking action by reducing the use of fossil fuels, researching the use of alternative sources, and increasing the efficiency of its energy use, whether on battlefield outposts in Afghanistan or home installations in Texas. Speakers from each branch of the U.S. military have discussed similar opinions, expressing that action on this issue shouldn’t be taken for political reasons, but for security reasons. The money we pay for oil goes to regimes opposed to our interests. The cost of procuring, transporting, and securing that fuel is extreme, in dollars and to the lives of our troops.

This contrasts greatly with the attitude of too many Senators, who continue to choose politics over security. The U.S. Congress trusts the military and veterans on other security issues. Energy independence, energy security, and planning for the possible consequences of climate change are national security issues. The military is taking action, even if Congress won’t. If they’ll listen on other national security issues, let’s hope they’ll trust the military when it comes to a comprehensive clean energy climate plan that makes us energy independent.

Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB’s Photostream

Is the Google-Verizon Proposal a Killer App in the Broadband Debate?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Google and Verizon have finally released the details of the policy proposal they have been negotiating for nearly a year now, and the news has generated enormous chatter around Washington and across the blogosphere, with bloggers panning it andwatchdog groups warning of the end of the internet as we know it.

Obviously, advocacy groups on both sides are focused on the substance of the agreement. But I am more interested in what this means for the policy process, and how effective it will be in nudging Congress and the FCC to clarify the rules of the game for broadband internet service.What these two companies have provided is helpful: a concrete policy proposal that Congress and the FCC can consider, and that imposes a framework for targeted comments from the industry and watchdog groups.

In fact, given the weight of these two companies and the collapse last week of the FCC’s attempts at talks, the roll-out for this proposal may make it a “killer app” in the broadband debate (and not simply an internet killer, as some are calling it).Now that Google and Verizon have put a policy proposal on paper, it becomes the baseline that everyone else has to support or oppose to some degree, including FCC commissioners and members of Congress.Pressuring leaders to make decisions is an appropriate goal, and that’s what this proposal does.

As for the proposal itself, it should be judged as a work in progress.Many of the principles themselves are worthy goals: giving consumers freedom to choose content, applications, and devices; requiring more product transparency from service providers, and prohibiting paid fast lanes for internet traffic. The recommendation that the FCC have real teeth to enforce violations of the proposed rules on a case-by-case basis is a good one.

If the kind of self-regulation proposed for the broadband internet industry is going to be successful, there also needs to be enough competition in the market to empower consumers to punish service providers for violating the principles that Google and Verizon have laid out.That means that in addition to policing the market for bad apples, the FCC needs to be vigilant in monitoring the health and competitiveness of the market for broadband internet access.If there are enough companies offering similar services, and the FCC and watchdog groups hold companies publicly accountable for their behavior by informing consumers of violations, consumers can play a valuable role in policing the market by switching providers when they feel their content or services are being unfairly restricted.

Both CEOs acknowledge that “no two companies should be so presumptuous as to think they can solve this challenge alone,” and no one should see this as an end to the debate.Verizon and Google have given everyone involved a chance to speed up the process by narrowing the conversation to actual yes-or-no decision making.I commend these companies for at least trying to move the ball forward with a good-faith proposal.

Photo Credit:  Peter Huys’s Photostream

Mitt Romney Shudders

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Yesterday J.P. Green did a post on the Missouri “ObamaCare referendum,” noting its rather tilted character and echoing Jon Chait’s endorsement of a progressive way around the unpopularity of an individual mandate for the purchase of health insurance, as designed by Paul Starr.

But there’s another aspect of the Missouri vote that ought to be mentioned: the individual mandate that was the target of the the state law ratified by Proposition C wasn’t just a feature of “ObamaCare.” It was also a central element in RomneyCare, Massachusetts’ pioneer health reform effort. And amidst all the rationalizations that Romney has offered in an effort to distinguish RomneyCare from ObamaCare, he hasn’t repudiated his support for an individual mandate.

Even if you don’t think the Missouri vote was a fair representation of overall public opinion in the Show-Me State (and it’s dubious on that front, given the low turnout and the 2-1 Republican tilt among priimary voters), it was sure a good measure of how politically active Republicans feel. And a shudder had to shake Romney when he heard about it, since it’s very unlikely the 2012 Caucus-goers in next-door Iowa are going to feel any warmer towards the individual mandate seventeen months from now, when they once again pass judgment on Mitt’s presidential ambitions.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist

Photo Credit: nmfbihop’s Photostream

Tea Bags, Wind Bags and Moneybags

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

So let’s say you’re a Republican politician who’s been working the far right side of the political highway for years, getting little national attention other than the occasional shout-out in Human Events. Or let’s say you’re a sketchy business buccaneer with a few million smackers burning a hole in your pocket, and you’ve decided that you’d like to live in the governor’s mansion for a while, but you can’t get the local GOP to see you as anything more than a walking checkbook who funds other people’s dreams.

What do you do? That’s easy: Get yourself in front of the loudest parade in town by becoming a Tea Party Activist!

There has been incessant discussion over the last year about the size, character, and intentions of the Tea Party rank-and-file. But, by and large, the political discussion has passed over another defining phenomenon: The beatific capacity of Tea Party membership, which enables virtually anyone with ambition to whitewash his hackishness—and transform from a has-been or huckster into an idealist on a crusade.

After all, to become a “Tea Party favorite” or a “Tea Party loyalist,” all a politician has to do is say that he or she is one—and maybe grab an endorsement from one of many hundreds of local groups around the country. It’s even possible to become indentified as the “Tea Party” candidate simply by entering a primary against a Republican who voted for TARP, the Medicare Prescription Drug bill, or No Child Left Behind. It’s not like there’s much upside to distancing oneself from the movement. Most Republican pols are as friendly as can be to the Tea Party; and it’s a rare, self-destructive elephant who would emulate Lindsey Graham’s dismissal of it all as a passing fad (in public at least).

Here, we’ll take a look at two specific types of politicians who have been especially eager to embrace the Tea Party movement: the fringier of conservative ideologues, for one, and also the self-funded ego freaks who can easily pose as “outsiders,” because no “insiders” would take them seriously. Let’s call these, respectively, the windbags and the moneybags.

By “fringier” conservative ideologues, I mean those who have argued, year in and year out, sometimes for decades, that even the conservative Republican Party simply is not conservative enough. Many of these politicians would be considered washed-up and isolated, or at least eccentric, in an era when “Party Wrecking” was still treated as a cardinal GOP sin. But now it’s as if they’ve been granted a license to kill. One classic example of this type is South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who was considered such a crank in the Senate that he was often stuck eating lunch alone as recently as 2008. His views, for example that Social Security and public schools are symbols of the seduction of Americans by socialism, were not long ago considered far outside the GOP mainstream. Now, in no small part because of his identification with the Tea Party Movement, DeMint has become an avenging angel roaming across the country to smite RINOs in Republican primaries, his imprimatur sought by candidates far from the Palmetto State.

Then there’s the new House Tea Party Caucus, chaired by Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, best known for suggesting that House Democrats be investigated for treason. Its members include a rich assortment of long-time conservative cranks, including Steve (“Racial profiling is an important part of law enforcement”) King, Joe (“You lie!”) Wilson, Paul (“We’ve elected a Marxist to be President of the United States”) Broun, Dan (Vince Foster Was Murdered!) Burton, and Phil (National Journal’s Most Conservative House Member in 2007) Gingrey. The key here is that these are not freshly minted “outsiders”: Burton has been in Congress for 28 years, Wilson for ten, King and Gingrey for eight. The oldest member of the House, Ralph Hall of Texas, who has been around for 30 years, is also a member of the caucus.

Even some of the younger Tea Party firebrands didn’t exactly emerge from their living rooms on April 15, 2009, to battle the stimulus legislation and Obamacare. Marco Rubio of Florida, after all, was first elected to the state legislature ten years ago and served as House Speaker under the protective wing of his political godfather, Jeb Bush. Sharron Angle first ran for office 20 years ago, and was elected to the Nevada legislature twelve years back. And of course the Pauls, father and son, are hardly political neophytes—they have just begun to look relevant again because the Tea Party movement has shifted the GOP in their direction.

And, in addition to the hard-right pols who’ve emerged into the sunshine of GOP respectability, the “outsider” meme surrounding the Tea Party movement has also created running room for well-funded opportunists—the “moneybags.”

These are epitomized by Rick Scott of Florida, who probably would not have passed the most rudimentary smell test in a “normal” election year. While there are always self-funding egomaniacs running for office—California’s Meg Whitman comes to mind along with Connecticut’s Linda McMahon—the former hospital executive presents a unique test case for the whitewashing power of Tea Party identification. He has managed to overcome a deeply embarrassing embroilment in the largest Medicare fraud case in history by taking his golden parachute from Columbia-HCA and becoming a right-wing crusader against health care reform, helping to make that a central cause for the Tea Party movement. (Scott was forced out of his position as head of the for-profit hospital chain, which he tried to build into the “McDonald’s of health care,” and the organization was fined $1.7 billion for overcharging the federal government.)

Pushed out of his job after the fraud decision, Scott decided to found the Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR) group that exploded onto the national scene early in 2009 with a series of inflammatory TV ads attacking health reform, employing the same firm that crafted the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth spots against John Kerry in 2004. CPR also played a major role in organizing the town hall meeting protests in the summer of 2009, which marked the Tea Party movement’s transition from a focus on TARP and the economic stimulus bill to a broader conservative agenda.

So when Scott (a Missouri native who moved to Florida in 2003) suddenly jumped into the Florda governor’s race early in 2010, the cleansing power of tea had already transformed his image among conservatives, making his improbable campaign possible.

On the wrong side of this dynamic was Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a former congressman and sturdy, if conventional, conservative who had paid his dues by twice running unsuccessfully for the Senate. McCollum had apparently all but locked up the nomination when Scott, in mid-April, leapt into the ring with ads calling himself a “conservative outsider” who would “run our state like a business,” while tarring McCollum as the candidate of “Tallahassee insiders” responsible for “the failed policies of the past.” Then came a torrent of advertising from Scott ($22 million by mid-July, more than anyone’s ever spent in Florida in an entire primary/general-election cycle) blasting McCollum for alleged corruption, for insufficient hostility toward illegal immigration, for being soft on abortion providers. The assault voided a lifetime of McCollum’s toil in the party vineyards, vaulting the previously unknown Scott into the lead in polls by early June. Worse yet, from a Republican point of view, Scott drove up McCollum’s negatives, and increasingly his own, to toxic levels, handing Democrat Alex Sink the lead in a July general election poll. And now McCollum, fighting for his life, is striking back, drawing as much publicity as he can to Scott’s questionable past, especially the Medicare fraud case against Columbia-HCA.

So the question is: Would Rick Scott have been in a position to carry out what is beginning to look like a murder-suicide pact on the GOP’s gubernatorial prospects if he hadn’t been able to identify himself as an “outsider conservative” with close ties to the Tea Party? That’s not likely, but it’s no less likely than the remarkable epiphanies that have made career pols of marginal relevance such as Jim DeMint and Sharron Angle into apostles of an exciting new citizens’ movement. So the next time you hear a candidate posturing on behalf of the Tea Party, squint and try to imagine what they were like in their former lives. Many of them have only found respectability through the healing power of tea.

This item is cross-posted at The New Republic.

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Midwestern Primary Gleanings

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Yesterday’s primaries in Kansas, Michigan and Missouri didn’t get a whole lot of national attention, but they produced some interesting results.

As I mentioned yesterday, MI gubernatorial candidate Rick Snyder ran a campaign very much at odds with the CW that the only way to win a GOP primary is to loudly and repeatedly proclaim one’s fidelity to conservative principles and policy positions. The self-proclaimed “nerd” won handily, with 36% of the vote as compared to 27% for congressman Pete Hoekstra and a very disappointing 23% for Attorney General Mike Cox.

Since Snyder explicitly appealed for crossover votes, political detectives (myself included) will try to figure out if that was a big factor in his victory. It was rather interesting that turnout tilted 2-1 Republican in a state that hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential contest since 1988. Certainly the idea that Democrats got involved in a Republican primary will be a source of consolation to conservatives who are none too happy with the results.

Meanwhile, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate known for “centrism,” House Speaker Andy Dillon, didn’t do so well, losing to labor-backed Lansing mayor Virg Bernero by a 59-41 margin. Bernero edged Dillon in his Detroit-area base and then waxed him in heavily unionized areas elsewhere.

The other big Democratic news from Michigan was the defeat of Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick by state senator Hansen Clarke, a development generally attributed to the disastrous decline and fall of her son, former Detroit mayor and current prison inmate Kwame Kilpatrick.

Elsewhere Republicans made the most news and the CW pretty much held. In KS, in a contest dominated by conflicting claims of superior conservatism, Rep. Jerry Moran defeated Rep. Todd Tiahrt by a 50-45 margin, mainly by running up a bigger vote in his own House district. In terms of national endorsements, it was a win for Jim DeMint and a loss for Sarah Palin and Tom Tancredo.

In House races, the big winner on the night was probably the Club for Growth, whichbacked winning candidates in three crowded GOP primaries (MI-3, KS-1 and KS-4). In MI-1, Bart Stupak’s district, where a competitive race is expected in November, add another data point to the Every Vote Counts argument, as exactly one vote separated the two leading Republican candidates (a recount is pending).

And offsetting their bad news from the Michigan governor’s race, conservatives today are crowing about the results of a referendum in Missouri over a proposed state law aimed at blocking implementation of federal health reform legislation. Proposition C, which essentially challenges the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause by outlawing mandated health insurance, won by a 71-29 margin, which is very impressive until you realize that primary turnout in Missouri was 2-1 Republican. In any event, the referendum will have no practical effect, but that won’t keep conservatives from bragging about it.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist

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Phil A. Buster and Democratic Regrets

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In an interesting argument over at OpenLeft about the biggest mistake recently made by Democrats, Chris Bowers suggests that fighting Republican efforts to gut the right to filibuster back during the “nuclear option” debate of 2005 had truly fateful consequences:

[N]ot allowing Republicans to destroy the filibuster back in 2005 is the biggest mistake made by not only President Obama, but by the Democratic trifecta as a whole (and, I admit, my biggest mistake too). This would have resulted in a wide swatch of changes, including a larger stimulus, the Employee Free Choice Act, a better health bill (in all likelihood, one with a public option, and completed in December), an actual climate / energy bill, a second stimulus, and more. If Democrats had tacked on other changes to Senate rules that sped up the process, such as doing away with unanimous consent, ending debating time after cloture is achieved on nominations, eliminating the two days between filing for cloture and voting on cloture, and restricting quorum calls, then virtually every judicial and administration vacancy would already be filled, as well.

I agree with the general argument that Democrats who got all nostalgic about Senate traditions in 2005 when Republicans were threatening to eliminate filibusters against judicial nominations were not thinking strategically. In particular, those who cheered the Schoolhouse Rock-inspired “Phil A. Buster” ads run by the progressive Alliance for Justice would now probably cringe at the memory.

But for the record, it’s important to remember what was actually going on in 2005, in the Republican effort to force Senate floor votes on Bush judicial nominations. The GOP argument was not against filibusters tout court, but against judicial filibusters. And their argument was that such filibusters were unconstitutional on grounds that they violated the provisions requiring Senate advice and consent for judicial nominations. Indeed, the “nuclear option” they threatened was simply a ruling by the vice president, as presiding officer of the Senate, that Rule XXII governing the terms for ending debate was unconstitutional with respect to judicial nominations. Ending filibusters altogether was never on the table, barring some see-you-and-raise-you Democratic tactic of offering Bush his judges in exchange for a more radical step towards majority rule in the Senate, which was never seriously contemplated.

Sure, Republicans have had some fun over the last couple of years quoting Democrats who made pro-filibuster comments in 2005, and it’s true that some Democrats didn’t try very hard back then to make the specific case for judicial filibusters (a case that could have been made on grounds that lifetime appointments to the federal bench require greater Senate scrutiny than the routine legislation that Republicans now routinely block, creating a virtual 60-vote requirement for Senate action). But Democrats need not spend too much time regretting the failure to take advantage of an opportunity that never really existed in 2005.

Photo Credit: displacedtexan’s Photobucket

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Keeping the Record Straight on the Midterm Landscape

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

At CQ today, Roll Call columnist and election handicapper Stu Rothenberg has a piece today complaining about Democrats who are arguing that it was inevitable all along that they’d have a bad midterm outcome, regardless of the economy or other objective developments.

I’m not sure which “Democrats” Rothenberg’s talking about, since the only person he cites who believes the economy is irrelevant to the midterms is Joe Scarborough.

But while I don’t personally know anyone who thinks the economy isn’t going to be a drag on Democratic performance, in burning down this straw man, Rothenberg goes too far in dismissing structural factors that were going to make 2010 far more difficult for Democrats than 2008 no matter what Barack Obama did or didn’t do.

Since Rothenberg’s entire argument is framed in terms of House seats Democrats are likely to lose, the obvious structural factor to keep in mind is the historic tendency of the party controlling the White House to lose House seats in midterms. Stu acknowledges that, but points out that the level of losses varies (of course it does) and also points to 1998 and 2002 as years the ancient rule of midterm losses didn’t apply. That’s fine, though anyone citing those two years as relevant should probably note that the former year came in the midst of the first impeachment of a president since 1867, while the latter year came after the first attack on the continental United States since 1814. At any rate, while most Democrats early in the Obama presidency hoped the party would overcome the heavy weight of history, few predicted it as likely.

But the second structural factor is one that Rothenberg does not mention at all: the very different demographic composition of midterm versus presidential electorates, which is especially important this year given the high correlation of the 2008 vote with age (at least among white voters), and the heavy shift towards older voters in midterms. As I like to say, this means that Democrats were in trouble for the midterms the very day after the 2008 elections. That doesn’t mean everything that happened since doesn’t matter, by any means, but it does suggest pessimism about 2010 and a corresponding optimism about 2012, when the 2008 turnout patterns are likely to reemerge or even intensify.

Finally, in this kind of discussion of House “gains” and “losses,” it’s important to remember that the entire U.S. House of Representatives is up for reelection every two years. So the position of the two parties nationally is reflected by the absolute results, not which party “gains” or “loses” seats from the prior election. If Democrats hang onto control of the House, it’s a Democratic victory (albeit a much smaller one than in 2008) because they will have won a majority of seats (and presumably a majority of votes for the House nationally), and it’s not a Republican victory but instead a smaller defeat. House gains or losses are relevant to trends, of course, but shouldn’t dictate characterization of specific election results.

In other words, Rothenberg’s effort to anticipate and preempt Democratic spin about the November elections is all well and good, but there a lot of questionable assumptions about this election that need to be examined–most definitely the idea that any significant Republican gains mean the country has fundamentally changed its mind since 2008. That’s a “spin” that Republicans are already avidly promoting every day.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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Dems and Spending: There Will be Blood

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Congressional Budget Office’s latest fiscal forecasts confirm that America faces a fiscal emergency. The national debt is projected to double as a share of GDP from 32 percent in 2001 to 66 percent next year. Then it could rise to 90 percent by the end of this decade, and reach 146 percent by 2030. At that point, we’d be spending about 36 percent of tax revenue to finance our debts, up from 9 percent today.

The nation’s yawning fiscal gaps, driven largely by entitlement spending, can’t be closed by a combination of economic growth and tax hikes. When it comes to government spending, there will be blood. Only not now: At the federal level at least, unemployment will have to fall dramatically, probably to around 5 or 6 percent, before real discipline can be imposed on public spending. Otherwise a premature turn to austerity could plunge the national economy back into recession.

Let’s stipulate that Republicans are consummate hypocrites when it comes to fiscal discipline. On taking power in 2000, they let budget controls lapse, spent the hard-won surplus they inherited on tax cuts, charged a trillion-dollar prescription drug entitlement to the nation’s credit card, and launched the very Wall Street bailout they now have the temerity to denounce.

And now GOP leaders insist that the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts be extended to the wealthy, not just middle class families as President Obama has proposed. Since they offer no offsetting spending cuts or tax hikes, this would add between $2-$3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

Okay, Republicans have no shame, and Democrats are paragons of fiscal rectitude by comparison. Nonetheless, Democrats before long will have to commit what many regard as unnatural acts: make deep cuts in public spending.

For a sobering glimpse of what the future might hold, look at California. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday declared a state of emergency in a bid to force state legislators to pass a budget aimed at closing a $19 billion shortfall.

The Golden States deficit, according to Reuters, “is 22 percent of the $85 billion general fund budget the governor signed last July for the fiscal year that ended in June, highlighting how the steep drop in California’s revenue due to recession, the housing slump, financial market turmoil and high unemployment have slashed its all-important personal income tax collection.”

Democratic lawmakers nonetheless have blocked Schwarzenegger’s proposals for deep spending cuts, leaving the gubernator to threaten another round of unpaid furloughs for state workers. California may also be forced to issue IOUs instead of payments to vendors if the legislature fails to pass a budget soon.  And the state is trying to renegotiate generous pension schemes for state employees.

The California crisis should be a wake up call for Democrats in Washington. A major fiscal retrenchment is coming, and they need to be better prepared for it than their counterparts in Sacramento.

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History Does Not Repeat Itself — It Doesn’t Even Rhyme

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Somehow the summer of 2010 has become the winter of liberals’ discontent. The blogosphere and MSNBC are rife with handwringing liberals wondering, “Is Barack Obama becoming a new Jimmy Carter”? Though President Obama’s sliding approval ratings and high unemployment should concern all Democrats it is, nevertheless, time for liberals to park the Volvo, put down their collective lattes, turn off NPR and repeat after me: Barack Obama is not Jimmy Carter.

FOX, RedState, and the New York Post are truly worthy of this lame and totally unimaginative analogy. Recently, however, the HuffingtonPost, Guardian, and even Zbigniew Brzezinski have parroted this metaphor. Historical analogies might make someone appear knowledgeable but they are too often used as a substitute for actual thinking. Repeat after me: Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama are NOT like peas & carrots.

Unlike Obama, Jimmy Carter governed at the end of a durable liberal political paradigm: the New Deal era. Since the onset of the Great Depression liberals had so ruled the political landscape that even Dwight Eisenhower accepted and even expanded upon the New Deals welfare state. Indeed, when Barry Goldwater ran upon an anti-New Deal platform in 1964, he garnered less than 40 percent of the vote.

By the late 1970s, New Deal-style solutions of deficit spending and government programs had not only grown stale, they simply no longer addressed the problems confronting the nation. Reagan was hardly right on all issues, but targeted tax cuts combined with defense spending did help spark real and lasting economic growth. Similar to the seventies, today Reagan’s pragmatic conservatism has morphed into a rigid and inflexible ideology demanding reflexive and obsequious political kowtows regardless of circumstance.

While Reagan deserves much credit and liberals sowed the seeds of their own demise, significant demographic forces enabled conservatives to oversee a political realignment. It was the offspring of New Deal Democrats who elected Reagan. In moving from the industrial Midwest and Northeast to the Sunbelt, they shaped and formed Reagan’s base. From Southern California, Arizona, and Texas to Florida, millions of Americans left regions dominated by unions and white ethnic Democratic political machines for the decidedly libertarian West and socially conservative South. Thus, when Carter assumed the presidency the nation had literally undergone a seismic demographic shift, which gave Reagan an opportunity for political realignment.

Adding to the altered political geography was the legacy of 1968. In that terrible year Americans not only witnessed the assassination of MLK & RFK, it was the time during which a generation of liberals and leftists fell out of love with America. Soured by the Vietnam War, assassinations, and a white political backlash, liberals were alienated and distrustful of Middle Americans.

Unlike the 1970s, the political zeitgeist and demography are on progressives’ side. Whether it is Hispanic population growth in the Southwest and Upper South or a generation of young Obama Democrats, 2010 America ain’t 1980, 1994, or even 1936 America.

Demography, ideas, and political metrics hardly assure victory. The Republicans could take the House and even engineer a long-shot defeat of Obama in 2012. But that political success, like Democratic victories in 1970, 1974, and 1976, are short-term hiccups delaying an inevitable political realignment.

It is time, however, for progressives to move beyond the past. Indeed, with all due respect to Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson, liberals last enjoyed real and durable presidential leadership and success when Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” was at the top of the charts, “Meet Me in St. Louis” was a box office smash, and the St. Louis Browns sent the one-armed Pete Grey to patrol centerfield.

Truman, JFK, LBJ and Clinton provided an occasional oasis and even some substantial victories but today’s liberal distress only reveals we don’t know how unfamiliar we are with success. President Obama’s passage of a stimulus package, national healthcare, Wall Street reform, and a muscular and revised Afghanistan policy are the very definition of achievement. Liberal achievement has always prompted a conservative pushback. Similar to Obama’s agenda, Social Security, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and Medicare were not universally embraced upon their enactment.

Like the New Deal or any liberal era, hard work and political organization are a must if Democrats hope to safeguard and build upon their achievements. It is time for liberals, however, to stop the self-doubt and dare I say malaise (yes, I used that word—as a reverse jinx). We have an eloquent and inspiring leader in Barack Obama who heads up an extraordinarily savvy political operation. Though only Bing Crosby might recognize it liberalism is back. Repeat after me: progressives get shit done.

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Congress and Climate: The Long View

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As you know by now, no climate bill will emerge from this Congress. Most have picked up Lindsey Graham’s metaphor — “cap and trade is dead” — though I prefer to think of a bill as “mathematically eliminated”. In other words, the right reaction is not permanent loss of hope but “wait til next year.” That hope is faint, however, given the likely makeup of the next Congress.

It has not taken long for the process of taking stock and assigning blame to begin. Will Marshall here at Progressive Fix has written on Congress’ failure (and I agree with everything he writes). The New York Times op-ed page has been dominated by pieces on why the bill failed, and who is to blame. Grist  summarizes reactions. I don’t have much to add to what has already been said. I’m disappointed, but not surprised, and I think there is plenty of blame to go around. That said, I’m still very optimistic about the prospects for action on climate – and by that I mean specifically a national, comprehensive carbon price – in the relatively near future. I think failure in 2010 is a setback, but will be viewed in retrospect as a minor one. This is little different from the way I felt weeks or months ago, but events of last week seem to have suddenly made me a contrarian. Climate pessimism is the new zeitgeist. So why the optimism? Because changes are coming that make climate action inevitable. The world is moving, with or without the Senate.

Some of these changes are structural. Above all, climate policy has to face physical reality, not just social and political preferences. The science of climate change is clear on the big issues, is constantly improving its predictions, and is deepening our understanding of the climate system. The longer we wait, the more we will know — and the warmer the planet will get. Those skeptical of climate science have played almost no role in the failure of climate legislation this year; they were marginal from the beginning. Better knowledge, and tangible evidence of the consequences of climate change, will make the case for action steadily stronger. Physics, as much as politics, will move the “centrist” position on climate towards action. I hope this will be by way of clear but remote physical evidence, such as melting icecaps, rather than by way of weather disasters or droughts. Demographics point in the right direction as well. Young people tend to be more strongly in favor of limiting carbon emissions (though not all polls agree). As today’s youth start to vote and gain power and influence, legislators will have to respond or choose another career.

Another more or less structural change on the way is pressing need for deficit reduction. As both Tyler Cowen and Nate Silver have pointed out in the last couple of days, this, too, will increase the chances of a price on carbon. Higher taxes are almost a certainty given our debt burden and the plausible range of spending cuts. As Cowen puts it, a price on carbon is the “least bad tax” in the sense that it discourages harmful actions (emitting carbon) rather than productive activity.

Other changes come from policies already in the pipeline. Existing state and federal laws provide some authority for regulating carbon emissions, though results will be more modest and costs higher than they would be with a uniform national carbon price. This is my area of expertise, and we’ve written a lot on the issue at Resources for the Future. The summary is this – the EPA can get modest but meaningful carbon reductions with the tools it has, likely at modest cost. EPA regulations on “traditional” pollutants like sulfur dioxide, which are emitted primarily by fossil fuel (and above all coal) plants will also have co-benefits for carbon emissions. These incidental reductions in carbon emissions will make the goals we need to reach with an eventual carbon price more modest. In the past, health benefits from reduction in pollution from coal has been cited as a secondary reason to price carbon. Now, the tables are turned – moves to reduce these pollutants using existing Clean Air Act authority will have climate benefits. Put it this way – in the long or even medium-term, climate action isn’t dead, but coal is, at least unless carbon capture and storage technology becomes available at modest cost. David Roberts at Grist makes this point, with the added irony that coal will likely be begging for cap-and-trade before long, since it would probably give the industry a handout in the form of allowances that could be sold as plants are shut down.

Finally, there’s the economy. Whether out of opportunism or genuine fear, concerns over the economic impact of climate policy fueled opposition this year. If 2010 politics could be matched with the 2007 economy, I have no doubt that a climate bill (of some kind) would have passed the Senate. The politics will get rosier for climate action, for the reasons I explained above. The economy will strengthen as well, and “jobs” will not dominate politics to the extent that they are the only acceptable justification for policy, and the rhetorical foundation of all opposition to policy. Those that agree with Ross Douthat that “sometimes it makes sense to wait, get richer, and then try to muddle through” will be more prepared to muddle through as we get richer. If the economy does not improve, we have bigger problems – though the one small benefit of our economic troubles is that it has likely bought us a little time on climate. Carbon emissions are down sharply over the last few years. In fact it will be an interesting question to look back once we have some perspective and ask whether the economic crisis was beneficial or harmful in climate terms.

These changes are all inevitable or at least very likely. Together, they will make a carbon price ever more politically possible, and eventually politically necessary. As most people who have considered the climate problem seriously have known for a long time, pricing carbon is the only workable solution. Eventually, it will come.

Of course, whether climate action will happen is easier to predict than how long it will take. I don’t have an solid answer for the latter question. Some of the shifts I mention will take longer than others. Structural changes, like global warming itself and demographic shifts, may take a long time to affect politics. Policies in the pipeline are more well-understood, but many are in the planning stage and could be held up, possibly by litigation. Meaningful EPA regulations on carbon could be in place by late 2011, or might not be effective until near the end of the decade. Economic improvement should, I hope, come more quickly – but there are of course no guarantees, and the “joblessness” of the recovery to date may mean the economy will dominate politics for longer than growth figures would indicate. So I don’t  know when we’ll have real climate legislation. My best guess would be 2013 –  another presidential & congressional election, presumably a stronger economy, fossil industries under pressure from the EPA and states, and, plausibly, palpable evidence of climate change could all converge to make a comprehensive climate bill politically possible. But that’s only a guess.

A critical look at last week’s events and, indeed, the last few years of congressional inertia is warranted. Pushing for action on climate – whether at the grassroots or in the Capitol – is still desperately needed. The longer we wait, the greater the risk and the higher the cost. But these events are just minor scenes in a story whose end we already know. Climate action may come sooner, or it may come later, but it will come.

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Wikileaks: Lack of Editorial Discretion

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Does the existence of a whistle-blower website like Wikileaks do more harm or good? Decisions about exposing information to the public depends on nuance and context, and it’s clear that in the wake of this case, Julian Assange, the site’s editor-in-chief and public face, has little appreciation for either.

Wikileaks is, in effect, a conduit for purported whistle-blowers, and describes itself as a “buttress against unaccountable and abusive power” and prides itself on “principled leaking.”

As a vehicle for whistle-blowing, the site has a responsibility to assert editorial discretion about the content it supplies, carefully weighing costs and benefits to the whistle-blowing party, those the information directly impacts and third parties. If Wikileaks is an open-repository for secret information without discretion and vetting, that’s a problem.

Prior to releasing the current military documents, the site should have exercised discretion with the following criteria in mind:

— Does the totality of the information indicate unequivocal, fact-based wrongdoing?
— Is this information new? Does it add to the public debate?
— Does its release endanger or save lives?
— Does its release cost or save public money?

By its own standard, Wikileaks, at best, punted. More likely, it outright failed and discredited itself.

Assange could not make a reliable judgment about the totality of the information he released because he could not have possibly known what exactly he was releasing. With Wikileaks staff reportedly of about five full-timers and a budget of $300,000, it’s difficult to imagine how the site could have shifted through so many documents and assembled a reasonable cost-benefit analysis, even with an “army” of hundreds of part-time volunteers. Rather, he essentially outsourced vetting to The New York Times, Guardian, Der Spiegel, and other websites that have cattle-called hungry readers to sift through the material. Ergo, Wikileaks likely had no idea if it was releasing ironclad evidence of wrongdoing.

Second, as I detailed yesterday, the information was clearly not “new.” It only served to amplify public debate. Further, the information’s release likely endangered American lives, and certainly jeopardized American sources in methods and consequently, its safety.

Finally, it’s unclear about saving public money, unless you argue that ending the war would do so. But that argument, much like the answers to all of the above, suggest that Assange and Wikileaks are motivated much more by activism than journalism. And that discredits any strain of legitimate public service the site hopes to render in the future.

From now on, Wikileaks would do well to know exactly what it’s releasing, know that it’s a new fact, and weigh the balance of lives, security and money.

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