issue: Politics

Cheat Sheet for Climate Policy: Part I – What’s Essential for a Good Climate Bill

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

How to tell a good climate bill from a bad one? This series will guide you through the main issues that are likely to arise in the coming weeks as the Senate takes on climate change. In this post, we identify the essential ideas that need to be enshrined in any climate bill. These are the provisions that no good climate policy can do without. (To read the other posts in the series, click here.)

With Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) set to release their climate legislation next week, climate change seems poised to return to the top of the agenda in Washington. One lesson learned from the last big fight on the Hill — health care — is that things can get confusing and ugly quickly for non-expert observers when media attention shines a light on the congressional sausage factory. It becomes hard to keep issues and ideas straight, harder still to understand which are important, and the avalanche of political rhetoric can make it tempting to just tune out.

Our goal for this short series is to help you cut through the noise. These posts are intended to be a climate policy cheat sheet that will help you decode the discussions. The issues we’ll cover are not equally important — some, like a price on carbon, are integral to the success of any climate and energy policy. Others, like expanding oil drilling, are substantially less significant from a climate/emissions perspective, though perhaps more relevant from other angles (energy security, politics, etc.).

To make the relative importance of these issues clear, we’ve divided them into four categories of decreasing significance — the crucial, the merely important, the relatively minor and the distractions. We’ll summarize the issues in each of the four categories in different posts, starting today with the absolutely vital issues. These categories, we hope, will help you figure out whether something is relatively trivial, or if the farm is being given away in the course of the legislative debate.

We want to make it clear that these categories are based only on the policies’ impact on the key issue: reducing emissions as much as possible for the lowest cost. Other policy goals like economic equity, increased domestic energy production, energy security, etc. might all be important, but (at least in the context of climate policy debates) they’re subordinate to the primary aim of emissions reduction. We’ll mention these goals when one of the policies we discuss affects them, but they are not our focus. We also won’t spend much time discussing the relative levels of political support for different policies – we’ll leave the political commentary to others.

We’re sure that not all of you will agree with our judgment of the relative importance of these issues. That’s fine — encouraging and enabling quality debate on climate policy (look elsewhere for a science debate) is the entire point of the list.

Category I Issues: The Sine Qua Non of Climate Policy

#1: A price on carbon

As Nathan’s written here before, a climate policy without a price on carbon isn’t a serious one. Fossil fuels have deep roots in our economy, and only a carbon price can effectively reach all sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Just as important, no other policy can achieve reductions as efficiently as a carbon price can. The price mechanism forces firms to identify inefficiencies that generate excess greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in the cheapest emissions cuts.

A carbon price can come in one of two forms: either tax carbon emissions directly, or cap them and distribute a limited number of emissions allowances. While a carbon price is not the only policy that matters, it is the one that matters most by far. Anyone who tells you a carbon price is not the most important aspect of climate legislation, no matter how well-intentioned, is wrong.

No climate proposal from the Hill, and few media reports, however, will mention a carbon price. Instead, you’ll hear about cap-and-trade or, since that term has become politically unpalatable, any one of a number of rebrandings: “cap and dividend,” “creating a green economy,” “incentives-based mechanisms,” or something altogether new. If there’s one point worth making here, it’s this — none of these names matter very much, at least substantively. They serve a political purpose, not a policy purpose.

By far the most important question to ask is whether a rebranded proposal puts a price on carbon or not. Is there a cap on emissions and allowances or permits that emitters can trade? Is there a single price (whether it’s called a tax or not) on carbon emissions? If there is, the rest of the proposal is secondary (the details of which may or may not be important). If not, it’s not an honest climate policy.

#2: Breadth of coverage—how much carbon gets priced?

A related issue is how much of U.S. carbon emissions a price mechanism covers. A tax or cap-and-trade system could cover the entire economy, or just one or more sectors. Generally speaking, the broader the coverage of a single emissions market, the greater the possible emissions reductions and the lower the cost per unit of emissions reduction. In other words, broader markets are better. There is some indication that the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman proposal will have an energy-sector only cap, with other measures used to reduce emissions elsewhere. This is useful, but not as good as an economy-wide cap.

A useful rough rule of thumb is that electricity-sector emissions are a third of total U.S. emissions, transportation-sector emissions are another third, and everything else (industry, agriculture, etc.) comprises the remaining third. Since it’s hard to measure emissions from some sectors (like agriculture), a program that includes all U.S. emissions isn’t practical. But including electricity, transportation and industry is feasible and can cover approximately 85 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Policies that cover these sectors are better than those that don’t, and policies that have the same price mechanisms for all three are best of all.

#3: Emissions reduction targets — setting the cap

Setting a price on carbon is critical, but it’s only a means to an end. The goal, of course, is to reduce greenhouse gas (primarily CO2) emissions and limit environmental damages. Once you know that a proposal is a serious one (because it includes a price on carbon), your next question should be how much that policy will reduce emissions. In short, what’s the target?

For a cap-and-trade system, knowing the target is easy: it’s the cap. The concept is pretty simple: set a finite number of emissions allowances and distribute them to actors in the economy in the first year of the program. In each succeeding year, lower the number of allowances available until you reach a desired level of emissions.

For a carbon tax, figuring out emissions reductions is a little more complicated. A rising tax produces similar results as a tightening cap, but you trade emissions certainty (you don’t know exactly how much reduction you’ll get, unlike with cap-and-trade) for price certainty (emitters know exactly how much it will cost for them to emit greenhouse gases). With a cap, it’s the opposite – we know exactly how much we’ll get in reductions, but the market for allowances will determine the price.

More often than not, the first thing highlighted about a new climate proposal are the reduction targets, especially the near-term targets. From an environmental perspective, however, the more important issue is cumulative emissions, not emissions at any point in time. That’s because CO2 and other greenhouse gases are stock pollutants — they accumulate over time. It doesn’t necessarily matter if high or low volumes are released at certain times, just what those volumes add up to over the course of the regulation.

The current global benchmark, to which U.S. action will contribute, is to reach an emissions path that keeps average temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius. For climate legislation, what matters is the general path of emissions, not necessarily the specific reductions in 2020 or 2040. As we’ll explain in our next post, specific market regulations will determine the exact emissions in any given year, but the market needs a path to follow, which is determined by the lowering cap (or increasing tax). There’s no way to guarantee some set percentage reductions in any year without a direct mandate, which would be extremely costly and restrictive. When you hear lawmakers railing about how 20 percent reductions from 2005 levels in 2020 are unreasonable but 14 percent cuts are attainable, know that they are having a political discussion, not a policy one.

In short, the exact percent emissions targets don’t matter too much year to year. Instead of worrying about whether the goal is to reduce greenhouse gas output by 17 percent or 20 percent in 2020, worry about the trajectory of emissions reduction over the lifetime of the regulation. The long-term outlook is much more important than the short-term benchmarks. Unfortunately, finding out what this long-term outlook is can be hard. It’s a failure of policy leaders and the media that short-term single-year targets are widely publicized while the effect of a given policy on the future stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is rarely discussed.

The Bottom Line

These issues — a carbon price, its reach and the emissions target — are by far the most important parts of a climate proposal. The first questions you should ask of any such proposal are:

  1. Does it create a price on carbon?
  2. How much of U.S. emissions are covered by that price?
  3. What is the path of emissions reduction set by the cap?

The answers to these questions are the most critical to designing effective climate policy. Other things are important, too, as we’ll describe in our next post, but don’t let them distract you. If you care about climate change, keep your eyes on these three ideas.

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

Update: This item has been corrected.

Earth Day at 40: Can Obama Outperform Nixon?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the first of which took place in 1970 at the beginning of the golden age of environmental legislation in the United States. It’s a telling statement that in the past four decades, the most successful environmental record belongs to Richard Nixon.

Our most disgraced president looks rather hippie-esque when you look at the achievements that passed during his administration: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Marine Mammals Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act all became law under his watch, and he established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) soon after Earth Day One.

Since then, environmental policy has often meandered from favored conservative punching bag to a second-tier issue. President Barack Obama has a chance to cement a similar environmental legacy by acting on climate, energy and natural conservation legislation. How has he done so far? In his first term in office, President Obama has achieved notable environmental progress by simply not being President Bush.

Following arguably the most anti-environment administration since the 1970s, almost anyone would shine in comparison. Like on many other fronts, Obama does not lack for ambition. He included energy as one of his three top priorities during the 2008 campaign and has signaled that it will be getting his attention very soon. That being said, the Obama administration has not yet established an impressive or even cohesive environmental record. Many of the president’s actions have been piecemeal, either addressing specific policy problems or cleaning some of the messes left over from the previous eight years. He has yet to achieve a stout victory on the environmental front, but it has only been one year. He still has time to work.

Below is a list of the top five environmental actions that occurred in the first year of the Obama administration – and five other items on which he needs to do more work:

The Accomplishments

  • Endangerment finding: This finding, which said that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers human health, gave the EPA authority to regulate it under the Clean Air Act. This is the most significant step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions the U.S. government has yet taken.
  • CAFE standards: The EPA increased average fuel economy standards for cars and trucks in the U.S. fleet to be 35 mpg in 2020, the first increase since 1990. The regulation is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 960 million metric tons by 2030.
  • The stimulus package: The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act channeled $8 billion toward energy projects, mainly focusing on renewables and energy efficiency. It included another $6 billion in water and wastewater projects.
  • Copenhagen: Simply put, international climate negotiations would have collapsed were it not for the direct personal involvement of the president. He was instrumental in getting almost every country in attendance to commit to two-degree temperature rise targets, helped get important concessions from China on emissions monitoring and established long-term financing ($100 billion annually by 2020, $20 billion for the U.S.) for international adaptation efforts.
  • Executive appointments: Lisa Jackson at EPA. Steven Chu at Department of Energy. Nancy Sutley at Council on Environmental Quality. Ken Salazar at Department of Interior. John Holdren at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Jane Lubchenco at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Carol Browner as special adviser to the president on energy and climate change issues. These are all smart, competent, committed people who will help the president shape effective environmental policies over the course of his administration.

So what can Obama do for the environment in 2010 and the second half of his term? Here are just a few things:

The To-Do List

  • Climate: Above all, the president should push Congress hard to pass legislation that controls greenhouse gases by setting a price on carbon. The president already has a climate bill, Waxman-Markey, that had passed the House last year and was ready to go to the Senate. Instead of pushing this bill, he and the Senate leadership chose to focus on health care. That process consumed the heart of this Congress’ legislative calendar and much of its political energy. While that choice was understandable, it leaves action on climate and energy as the largest unfulfilled element of the president’s legislative agenda.Debates on climate appear set to start again in the Senate with the release of a new bill next week. The president should push the debate forward, hopefully resulting in a new law that sets economy-wide greenhouse gas controls before the November elections. This is admittedly an ambitious goal. If it proves impossible, Obama should dedicate as much energy in the second half of his term to climate as he did to health care in the first.
  • Air pollution: With so much focus on climate, traditional forms of pollution haven’t drawn much attention. Conventional pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, mercury and ozone still pose significant health risks, and economists believe reducing emissions of these pollutants would result in substantial net benefits to the economy in life expectancy and quality of life. The EPA’s recent attempts to tighten regulations on these pollutants (both of which, it must be said, were authored by the Bush EPA) were struck down by courts. The Obama EPA should renew efforts to regulate these pollutants by issuing new versions of these rules (called CAIR and CAMR) as soon as possible. The president should throw his support behind proposed “3-pollutant” legislation on the Hill that would remove the legal barriers to stricter regulation of these pollutants, and follow that legislation up with action from the EPA. (More on that bill in a later post.)
  • Nuclear waste storage: The president has thrown his support behind nuclear power with $8 billion in loan guarantees for two new plants in Georgia. Regardless of your opinion of nuclear power as an energy source, you have to admit the storage of waste poses quite a problem. The president eliminated Yucca Mountain, the long-controversial water repository in Nevada, without proposing a specific alternative. He organized a blue-ribbon panel to look into solutions to the nuclear waste problem, and the commission is supposed to issue its recommendations sometime next year. They have their work cut out for them.
  • Environmental foreign policy: The president should also consider making environmental issues a more central part of his foreign policy. Whether it’s pushing China, India, Russia and others to agree to global cuts in carbon emissions, or calling Japan out for its cynical efforts to avoid limits on bluefin tuna fishing, ample opportunities exist for advancing U.S. environmental interests internationally and re-establishing our position as the global leader on environmental policy innovation. The president has made a good start in this area, but he can do more.
  • Future environmental dangers: Finally, the president can move beyond environmental issues that have been neglected in the past to examining possible future environmental risks. Many such risks, such as pollution of water with pharmaceuticals and the environmental impacts of nanotechnology, aren’t sufficiently understood. Government also lacks the tools to deal with these issues even if they are identified as dangers. The president should dedicate resources to investigating these and other future risks, and push Congress to give the EPA authority to regulate them when supported by the science. These are the kinds of forward-looking reforms that Nixon pursued, and which could give Obama an enduring environmental legacy.

Success on these fronts — and above all on climate — would not only fulfill President Obama’s environmental promises, but would put him in contention as the most environmentally successful president since Nixon, and likely ever.

Dark Horses

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

On Monday I reported on an exchange I had with RealClearPolitics’ Jay Cost on my contention that the political landscape is likely to get a lot rockier for Republicans in 2012, no matter how well they do this November.

I don’t want to keep this exchange going perpetually, but Jay’s last update raises two issues that I want to mention before turning the page. First, he quite rightly argues that the governing record of the Obama administration, and the policy and message response of the GOP, could have at least as large an impact on 2012 as the demographic factors I stressed in my original piece. No question that is true, and that’s the sort of thing I write about nearly every day. But I don’t get the sense that Republicans are paying much attention to the changes in landscape that are going to occur semi-automatically as we move from a midterm to a presidential cycle — changes that will complicate every step they take. And that was the main point of my Salon article, which was by no means some sort of definitive personal manifesto on everything related to the 2012 elections.

But Cost makes an argument on another question where I am much less inclined to agree with him: How likely it is that a “dark horse” will emerge in 2012 to revolutionize the Republican presidential field? Sure, again, anything’s possible, particularly this far from Election Day 2012. But as I observed in my original piece, presidential campaigns these days almost have to develop long in advance, particularly for “dark horses” who have to establish name ID, raise a lot of money, and then perform the ritual of semi-residence in early primary and caucus states. (I suspect there may be some understandable confusion on Jay’s part based on the assumption that I was arguing that various “dark horse” candidates would be poor general election candidates, but my main contention was that Republicans had a weak field of leading candidates, and that none of the dark horses had the chops to get the nomination).

Jay thinks my lukewarm assessment of lesser-known potential Republican presidential candidates like John Thune, Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence and Tim Pawlenty is just a matter of partisan bias. He even makes the (to me) astonishing statement that Thune’s appeal is no more superficial than Barack Obama’s in 2008 (which I’d say reflects more than a little partisan bias). So let’s think about what makes a “dark horse” candidate formidable, at a time when there are no kingmakers to pluck a Warren Harding out of obscurity and lift him to the nomination. I’d say the minimum qualifications are one if not more than one of the following qualities: exceptional public renown; special identification with a major cause or new ideology; a particular appeal to important and previously underrepresented constituencies; a remarkable public personality; or a novel approach to presidential candidacy. To some extent, dark horses these days, unless they just get lucky, need a candidacy that is in some respect historic. Giant fountains of money also help, though none of the people being “mentioned” as dark horses in 2012 are named Michael Bloomberg. Geography can matter, too, but that’s usually not dispositive unless a candidate’s geographical origins are somehow “historic” or unique.

So let’s look at Cost’s list of potentially formidable 2012 dark horses with those criteria in mind. John Thune is a minor legend in Republican insider circles because he narrowly won a GOTV-driven slugfest in the heavily Republican state of South Dakota in 2004, thus beating Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. This was a testament to Thune’s personal attractivenss, durability, and willingness to toe the party line, but these are not typically the qualities that vault someone from obscurity to a presidential nomination. So far as I can tell, he is not particularly known for any policy positions, issues, or personification of any underrepresented constituency group or geographical grouping. Yes, he is broadly acceptable to every major element of the GOP, but “acceptability” is a quality that matters only when one is no longer a dark horse, and in any event, who isn’t “acceptable” in these days of monochromatic conservative uniformity in the GOP? That is also the problem of Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, were he to run for president. He’s a guy beloved of movement conservative types for representing the movement conservative point-of-view in the House GOP Caucus. But are self-conscious “movement conservatives” really a voting faction in the GOP nominating process, and are they so aggrieved by the rest of the field that they will coalesece around Pence? There’s no particular reason to think so.

Mitch Daniels is another insider heart-throb, in no small part because he was a major Washington figure as OMB Director under Bush 43, and then successfully took his act mainstream by being elected and then re-elected governor of a usually Republican state where Republican statewide candidates have often struggled. I can see the argument that Daniels’ resume equips him to become the symbol of the suddenly preeminent conservative issue of fiscal discipline (though oppo researchers would have great sport with his responsibility for Bush budget deficits). But again: is that a quality that so separates him from the field that he can make it his own? And does he have other personal or representational characteristics that could give him the rock-star aura to come out of national obscurity, and, say, win the Iowa Caucuses? Maybe, but the evidence of that isn’t obvious.

And then there’s Tim Paw, and it is true that he coined a very interesting and serviceable slogan in talking about “Sam’s Club Republicans.” It is also true, as Jay notes, that Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat turned that slogan into a pretty unorthodox agenda for the GOP–so unorthodox, in fact, that it was generally rejected or ignored by conservatives, aside from its very orthodox endorsement of tax subsidies for marriage and child-bearing. But that has little or nothing to do with Pawlenty, who has been conventionally conservative in his proto-presidential campaign, and whose Big Idea seems to be the ancient and completely symbolic chesnut of a balanced budget constitutional amendment.

Is there anything about these putative “dark horses” that makes any of them particularly stand out, other than as “acceptable” alternatives to the front-runners if one of them happens to get a one-on-one contest? I don’t see it. And there’s certainly nothing about any of them that is comparable to the Democratic “dark horses” that Jay Cost cites in his own piece: John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Kennedy was the first serious Catholic candidate for president since Al Smith; Carter was the first serious Deep South candidate since the Civil War; Clinton ran aggressively against the pieties of his own party; and Obama became a huge national celebrity as a state senator and went on to beat a legendary Democrat in virtually all-white Iowa.

Until someone emerges on the fringes of the Republican presidential field who can truly separate him- or herself from the field, anyone is entitled to some serious skepticism about the faith of many Republicans that they’ll wind up with a presidential candidate who doesn’t share the handicaps of the established field.

As for the weakness of that established field, check out Nate Silver’s 538.com post that comments on my exchange with Jay Cost and offers some objective evidence that the elephants running in 2012 don’t quite match the donkeys who ran in 2008.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

The Bridge We Are Still Crossing

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Few subjects create as much controversy as that of race, and that’s particularly true of any discussion of race and the 44th President of the United States. So it’s of considerable interest that the ever-estimable David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, has penned a new biography of Barack Obama, entitled The Bridge, that is focused primarily on Obama’s role as a major figure in the history of American race relations.

For those interested in this topic, I’ve written a pretty lengthy review of Remnick’s book for the Washington Monthly. I conclude that the racial conflicts raised and addressed by Obama’s rise to the White House remain, unfortunately, relevant to his presidency. I’m sure my review will eventually be added to the long list of material that conservatives object to as raising what they call “the race card.” Too bad.

Sources of the Rasmussen “House Effect”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If you are a progressive political junkie, odds are that one of the most depressing features of your week is the release of new polls from Scott Rasmussen. By and large, the ubiquitous robo-calling firm yields results that are more encouraging to Republicans than others (e.g., the big advantage it shows for the GOP in the generic congressional ballot), and the sheer weight of its state polling can be mind-numbing and spirit-sapping.

It’s generally been thought that this “house effect” of Rasmussen polls is the result of the early and stringent use of “likely voter” screens, which tend to produce a more conservative electorate. According to that theory, the “house effect” would be reduced as we get closer to election day and people make up their minds whether or not they are going to vote (this also accords with Rasmussen’s good record of final-days accuracy in recent elections).

But Nate Silver, as is his habit, takes a closer look at Rasmussen’s operations, and reaches a different conclusion: the raw sample Rasmussen uses before applying a “likely voter” screen seems to bear a “house effect” as well:

Although Rasmussen rarely reveals results for its entire adult sample, rather than that of likely voters, there is one notable exception: its monthly tracking of partisan identification, for which it publishes its results among all adults. Since Labor Day, Rasmussen polls have shown Democrats with a 3.7-point identification advantage among all adults, on average. This is the smallest margin for the Democrats among any of 16 pollsters who have published results on this question, who instead show a Democratic advantage ranging from 5.2 to 13.0 points, with an average of 9.6.

Why would that happen? Nate doesn’t suggest any deliberate bias by Rasmussen; but the firm does use polling techniques that tend to skew the sample:

Raw polling data is pretty dirty. If you just call people up and see who answers the phone, you will tend to get too many women, too many old people, and too many white people. This is especially the case if you rely on a landline sample without a supplement of cellphone voters.Pollsters try to correct for these deficiencies in a variety of ways. They may use household selection procedures (for instance, asking to speak with the person who has the next birthday). They may leave their poll in the field for several days, calling back when they do not contact their desired respondent. An increasing number may call cellphones in addition to landlines.

Rasmussen does not appear to do any of these things. Their polls are in the field for only one night, leaving little or no time for callbacks. They do not call cellphones. They do not appear to use within-household selection procedures. In addition, their polls use an automated script rather than a live interviewer, which tends to be associated with a lower response rate and which might exacerbate these problems. So Rasmussen’s raw data is likely dirtier than most.

Add in the likelihood that Republican voters are a bit more enthusiastic about reporting their views to pollsters at present, and you can see how Rasmussen’s “house effect” could be baked right into the cake. But if that’s true, the assumption that Rasmussen’s numbers will get more reliable as we approach election day may be questionable as well. Silver thinks the Rasmussen “house effect” is a new development that has emerged during this election cycle. So, too, may be a pattern of inaccuracy unless the firm takes corrective action.

Thus, Democrats are not necessarily exhibiting their own biases by taking Rasmussen’s results with a large grain of salt or mentally shifting the numbers leftward a few points. That’s an inexact science, but so, too, is polling.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

On Mideast Policy, We Can Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A few publications over the past week continue to highlight the importance of democracy promotion in the Middle East. Some have done a better job than others.

First up is Jackson Diehl’s piece in today’s Washington Post. Diehl makes one excellent suggestion — then diminishes it with a faulty assumption. His premise is that the Obama administration fails to understand that diplomacy in the Middle East is inextricably linked to timing. Diehl believes current geopolitical conditions suggest the White House should push for a democratic opening in Egypt, with elections looming this year to replace an aging president, and former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei building a credible reform movement in the country.

But as a consequence, Diehl believes that the Obama administration should set aside the larger Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that the Obama administration is cooking up to focus on Egypt.

The former is an excellent initiative and should be pursued despite America’s tricky, decades-long relationship with Egypt that has centered far more on regional military hegemony and diplomatic stability than democracy promotion. But Diehl treats Middle East policy as a zero-sum game, with Israel-Palestine being thrown by the wayside. According to Diehl, rather than focusing on Egypt:

Obama has focused most of his personal energy and diplomatic capital on the Arab-Israeli conundrum — where, for a variety of reasons, there is no immediate opportunity. …[T]he big challenge for the president is to set aside his preconceived notions about what big thing he can or should accomplish in the region — and seize the opportunity that is actually before him.

I ran this by my friend Andrew Albertson, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, and he dismissed the notion that we can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. In an email, he responded:

I certainly agree that the U.S. can and should be doing more in response to events in Egypt. Egyptians view this year as an opportunity to push for important political reforms in their country, and I think we need to support that. But no — I don’t think this is an either-or proposition. In fact, on the contrary, I think we will be more credible — and more effective — if we convey our support for the region’s people and basic issues of human dignity across the board.

The point is that both democracy and Egypt and big initiatives on Israel-Palestine are worthy endeavors. The former seizes on the opportunity available, and the latter attempts to create a bit of opportunity over the long run.

So how is the Obama administration doing on promoting democracy? Albertson’s POMED has just put out a new report by Stephen McInerney that takes a hard look at the Middle East democracy budget. McInerney finds that “total funding for democracy and governance is up” with important programs that promote Internet freedom, as well as aid to Afghanistan/Pakistan and Yemen, emphasized.

One of the big concerns, McInerney says, closely echoes Diehl’s original point:

Controversial changes in U.S. assistance to Egypt have been reinforced.• Funding for democracy in Egypt remains at levels sharply reduced in March 2009, which included disproportionate cuts in funding for civil society. The decision to provide USAID funding only to organizations registered and approved as NGOs by the Egyptian government remains in place. Finally, the administration is now exploring the establishment of an “endowment” proposed by the Egyptian government to remove congressional oversight over future U.S. economic aid.

By all means we should address these problems. But doing so need not come at the expense of other Mideast initiatives.

The Heart of the Republican Dilemma

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Ah, another Tax Day, another Tea Party poll! This one, from CBS/New York Times, is probably the most extensive we’ve seen. But the findings are only surprising to people who haven’t been paying close attention to the Tea Party Movement.

Tea Partiers are, in almost every significant respect, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans. Two-thirds say they always or usually vote Republican. Two-thirds are regular Fox viewers. 57 percent have a favorable view of George W. Bush, and tea partiers, unlike their fellow-citizens, almost entirely absolve the Bush administration from responsibility for either the economic situation or current budget deficits. Over 90 percent of them disapprove of Barack Obama’s job performance in every area they were asked about, and in another sharp difference from everyone else, 84 percent disapprove of him personally. Ninety-two percent think Obama’s moving the country “in the direction of socialism.” Nearly a third think he was born in another country. Three-fourths think government aid to poor people keeps them poor instead of helping them. Over half think too much has been made of the problems facing black people. Well over half think the Obama administration has favored the poor over the rich and the middle class (only 15 percent of Americans generally feel that way).

Interestingly, tea partiers are less likely than the public as a whole to think we need a third political party. That shouldn’t be surprising in a cohort that basically thinks the Bush administration was hunky-dory, but you’d never guess it from all the talk about the “threat” of a Tea Party-based third party.

So these are basically older (32 percent are retired) white conservative Republicans whose main goal, they overwhelmingly say, is to “reduce government.” But two-thirds think Social Security and Medicare are a good bargain for the country. And they certainly won’t support higher taxes.

Here’s a revealing glimpse into the older-white-conservative psychology from the Times write-up of the poll:

[N]early three-quarters of those who favor smaller government said they would prefer it even if it meant spending on domestic programs would be cut.But in follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”

Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.

Others could not explain the contradiction.

“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

And that’s the conundrum facing the Republican Party going forward. Having created a fiscal time bomb during the Bush administration, they are now born-again deficit hawks, and moreover, profess to think today’s federal government represents a socialist tyranny. But they are even more adamantly opposed to higher taxes, and their base doesn’t want them to touch “their” Social Security and Medicare, which they figure they’ve earned.

Barring a major retraction of America’s active role in the world, which would enable big reductions in defense spending (and we know few conservative Republicans favor that), the only thing left to do is the sort of wholesale elimination of federal functions last attempted by Republicans in 1995, which failed miserably, or an all-out attack on means-tested programs benefitting the poor. By all evidence, this last approach may please many Tea Partiers, but justice and efficacy aside, there is no approach more guaranteed to ensure that the Republican Party’s base gets even older and whiter than it already is.

At some point, the famous “anger” of the Tea Partiers will have to be propitiated by GOP leaders, but there’s no obvious way out of the dilemma Republicans have created for themselves.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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

Voters in a Bad Mood, British Edition

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the British general election campaign races towards its culmination on May 6, it’s increasingly obvious that the U.S. is hardly the only place where voters are in a bad mood. Virtually all of the polls show the Tories falling short of the 40 percent or so of the popular vote that would probably give them a parliamentary majority. And in a “hung parliament” scenario, the most likely result would be a coalition government involving Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

Dysfunctional as it sounds, the “hung parliament” scenario seems to be one that an awful lot of Britons prefer, according to a poll from Populus commissioned by the Times of London:

The poll shows that 32 per cent of the public hope for a hung Parliament, against 28 per cent who want a Tory majority and 22 per cent a Labour one. Lib Dem voters prefer a deal with Labour in a hung Parliament. Populus also underlines the extent of disenchantment: a mere 4 per cent think that the parties are being completely honest with voters about their tax plans and only 6 per cent about their approaches to cutting the deficit.

Twenty-five per cent said that they thought that the Tories had put across the most convincing case so far, and 18 per cent said Labour. However, 43 per cent were unconvinced by any party.

Leaders of the three major parties will hold the first of three televised debates tomorrow night. But it’s unclear how many voters will be watching, or in any meaningful sense, listening.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

The Gold Standard in Your Future

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a finding that will probably raise more questions about the pollster than about the poll-ees, Rasmussen has a new survey out that shows Ron Paul in a statistical dead heat with Barack Obama for the presidency in 2012, trailing him by one spare point (41/42).

The poll is of 1,000 “likely voters” (presumably likely 2010 voters), which really makes you wonder about Rasmussen’s famously narrow “likely voter” screen. And it shows Paul tying the president even though he has relatively weak support among self-identified Republicans; the eccentric opponent of foreign wars and the Federal Reserve System trounces Obama among “unaffiliated” voters 47/28.

I doubt too many observers will take this poll seriously, though it will be manna from heaven not only for the zealous foot soldiers of the Ron Paul Revolution, but for those who think (including, some might say, Scott Rasmussen) that right-wing libertarian “populism” is the wave of the future.

But the poll did produce one hilarious write-up, at USA Today. After reporting the numbers, the author (with a nod to the high-riding Senate campaign of Ron’s son Rand) says:

This raises the obvious question: will the Pauls be the next political dynasty, like the Kennedys and Bushes?

Now that’s what I call getting way ahead of the curve!

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

The New Pirates of Campaign Financing

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a staff post the other day, we noted that one big reason Republicans are willing to put up with the scandals and incompetence characterizing Michael Steele’s chairmanship of the Republican National Committee (RNC) is simply that new campaign finance rules have already undermined the party’s once-central role in funding campaigns.

At The American Prospect, Mark Schmitt has some useful if somewhat disturbing observations about the independent, corporate-funded committees that will dominate post-Citizens United Republican campaign financing.

Schmitt is one campaign finance expert who doesn’t think Citizens United has changed the source and direction of political money all that much. But it will affect control of political money, and strengthen an already powerful trend towards pirate independent operations that function on the margins of the political system:

Unlike parties and candidates, independent committees don’t have to worry about their long-term reputations. They are essentially unaccountable. The Republican Party plans to be around for decades into the future. It has to worry about its long-term reputation. But independent committees can be use-once-and-burn vehicles. There’s a reason we haven’t heard recently from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the independent committee formed to take down John Kerry in 2004 — like a basketball player sent in to commit six fouls, such operations have one purpose only and can disappear when they are finished.

Finally, independent committees are likely to play a more polarizing role. While parties can choose an early strategy of mobilizing the ideological base, by Election Day, they have to build majorities that include swing voters and independents. The incentives for independent committees are different — by mobilizing the ideological base, they generate not just votes but more and more donors. Their clout, unlike the party’s, derives only from money.

Republicans these days certainly don’t need any additional incentives to run negative campaigns or to elevate considerations of ideology over those of practical governing. But that’s what Citizens United may have wrought.

In the meantime, the RNC will trudge along, and the reduced actual clout of its chairman will not immediately translate into less media attention, particularly if he continues to serve up a rich diet of personal gaffes and institutional funny business. It would be nice, though, if media observers began to get a better focus on the people who are actually raising and spending the money that drives Republican campaigns. They’re the ones flying the jolly roger and proudly flouting every convention.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

What Not to Do in Afghanistan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Michael Cohen’s new piece in Dissent is a perfect blueprint for a colossal disaster in Afghanistan that would seriously jeopardize American security.

Michael, whose company I very much enjoyed during an ill-fated 72-hour effort to get to Afghanistan as election monitors, argues for a less-ambitious plan for American involvement in Afghanistan. It is deeply flawed.

The very first line, “The United States has been fighting the war in Afghanistan for more than eight years,” hints at the sentiments underlying his views: exhaustion with the war, a desire to end it. The piece makes a pitch for a new way forward in Afghanistan by offering a different strategy, something he calls an “enemy-focused approach.” His strategy calls for incorporating the Taliban into the government, shrinking the size of the Afghan army by some 80,000 troops and abandoning the entire South and East to the Taliban.

Where to begin? I’ve argued time and time again against the possibility of incorporating anything but the Taliban’s foot soldiers into the government. The most succinct argument I’ve seen against it is from Barbara Elias in last year’s Foreign Affairs:

[The Taliban’s] legitimacy rests not on their governing skills, popular support, or territorial control, but on their claim to represent what they perceive as sharia rule. This means upholding the image that they are guided entirely by Islamic principles; as such, they cannot make concessions to, or earnestly negotiate with, secular states.

Then there’s Cohen’s suggestion to scale back the size of the Afghan army, reasoning that 170,000 poorly trained Afghan soldiers trained by Americans are worse than 90,000 “trained to fight like an Afghan army — not an American proxy force.” Huh? Does anyone have a good example of what a model Afghan army looks like? Why does Cohen believe 90,000 is the right number? And why is Cohen so certain that American training efforts will fall flat for 170,000? And, if we did cut it off 90,000, what would we do with the extra 80,000 recruits to whom we’ve given basic firearms skills but have just lost their paycheck and would now feel betrayed by the U.S.?

And finally there is Cohen’s idea of just abandoning the South and East of the country. You know, the Marjas and Kandahars of Afghanistan where the U.S. is now either deeply invested or creating expectations that they’re about to be. Compounding the sense of betrayal that Afghans in those regions might feel (notice a theme?) would be the mistake of offering the Taliban the safe haven they require.

I suspect Cohen’s strategy is merely a fig leaf to preempt the inevitable right-wing cries of “cutting and running.” But while such sound-bite attacks are repulsive, there is a case to be made that Cohen offers his strategy disingenuously. Cohen thinks that “the original goal of the mission has been achieved; al Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan has been destroyed and its Taliban allies pushed from power.” But if that’s the case, why would we need a new strategy — why not just pull out entirely? And why advocate returning the Taliban to power if we’ve already pushed them out of it?

Cohen may be justifiably war-weary — we all are. But I happen to believe what Cohen wrongly calls President Obama’s “rhetorical tricks” about the “risks of an al-Qaeda return to Afghanistan” if we do not create a stable environment that can endure after we leave. And I also think that the counterinsurgency strategy that Cohen curtly dismisses as “a fad” is a sound plan that’s our best shot at lasting security in Afghanistan. Cohen mistakes U.S. gains in Afghanistan for victory and says we can leave now; I see it as proof that what we’re doing is working and that we should keep at it.

Michael, I’m sorry to be so blunt, but if you’re just sick of the war, it would be better to say it straight out and not offer half-baked, ineffective solutions that would seriously jeopardize American and Afghan security. Competent governance is about making really difficult decisions with the best information available. That’s exactly what this White House did with its careful, deliberative process, and that’s why I’m going to trust them on this one.

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

Immigration, the Tea Partiers and the GOP’s Future

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s long been apparent that immigration is an issue that is the political equivalent of unstable nitroglycerine: complex and dangerous. It arguably splits both major parties, although national Democratic politicians generally favor “comprehensive immigration reform” (basically a “path to citizenship” for undocumented workers who meet certain conditions and legalize themselves, along with various degrees of restriction on future immigration flows), and with George W. Bush gone, most Republicans oppose it.

It is of most passionate concern, for obvious reasons, to Latino voters, and also to many grassroots conservatives for which widespread immigration from Mexico into new areas of the country has become a great symbol of an unwelcome change in the nation’s complexion. But the fact remains that perceived hostility to immigrants has become a major stumbling block for Republican recruitment of otherwise-conservative Latino voters, which explains (along with business support for relatively free immigration) the otherwise odd phenomenon that it was a Republican administration that last pursued comprehensive immigration reform. (Some may remember, in fact, that immigration reform was and remains a big part of Karl Rove’s strategy for insuring a long-range Republican majority.)

I’m not sure how many progressives understand that immigration policy is a significant part of the narrative of “betrayal” that conservatives have written about the Bush administration — right up there with Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, and big budget deficits. And implicitly, at least, when Republicans talk about “returning the GOP to its conservative principles,” many would make repudiation of any interest in comprehensive immigration reform — or, as they typically call it, “amnesty for Illegals” — part of the litmus test.

This is one issue of many where professional Republican pols are almost certainly happy that Barack Obama is in office right now — they don’t have to take a definitive position on immigration policy unless the president first pulls the trigger by moving a proposal in Congress, and it’s unlikely he will until other priorities are met.

But at some point, and particularly if Republicans win control of the House in November and inherit the dubious prize of partial responsibility for governance, they will come under intense pressure to turn the page decisively on the Bush-Rove embrace of comprehensive immigration reform. And no matter what Obama does, immigration will definitely be an issue in the 2012 Republican presidential competition.

So it’s of more than passing interest to note that the pressure on Republicans to take a national position on this issue has been significantly increased by the rise of the Tea Party Movement.

At 538.com today, Tom Schaller writes up a new study of tea partiers and racial-ethnic attitude in seven key states from the University of Washington’s Christopher Parker. While the whole thing is of considerable interest, I can’t tease much of immediate political signficance from the fragmentary findings that Parker has initially released, beyond the unsurprising news that Tea Partiers have general views on race, ethnicity and GLBT rights that you’d expect from a very conservative portion of the electorate.

But one finding really does just jump off the page: Among the 22 percent of white voters who say they “strongly support” the Tea Party Movement in the seven states involved in the study, nearly half (45 percent to be exact) favor the very radical proposition that “all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. should be deported immediately.” That’s interesting not only because it shows how strong anti-immigrant sentiment is in the Tea Party “base,” but because it embraces a very specific and proactive postion that goes far beyond resistance to comprehensive immigration reform or “amnesty.” The finding is all the more remarkable because it comes from a survey on “racial attitudes”; I don’t know what sorts of controls Parker deployed, but polls that dwell on such issues often elicit less-than-honest answers from respondents who naturally don’t want to sound intolerant.

So if and when push becomes shove for the GOP on immigration, the shove from the Tea Partiers could be especially strong. And that won’t make the GOP happy: Republican elites understand that however bright things look for them this November (in a midterm contest that almost always produces an older-and-whiter-than-average electorate), their party’s base of support is in elements of the population that are steadily losing demographic ground. Beginning in 2012, that will become an enduring and ever-worsening problem for the GOP, and a position on immigration guaranteed to repel Latinos would be a very heavy millstone, just as Karl Rove concluded when he pushed W. to embrace comprehensive immigration reform.

The issue is already becoming a factor in the 2010 cycle. This is most obvious in Arizona, where J.D. Hayworth’s Tea-Party-oriented challenge to John McCain is in part payback for McCain’s longstanding support for comprehensive immigration reform. But it could matter elsewhere as well. You’d think that Cuban-American Senate candidate Marco Rubio would be in a good position to do very well among Florida Latinos. But actually, his potential achilles heel in a likely general election matchup with Democrat Kendrick Meek (who, as it happens, is an African-American with his own close ties to South Florida’s Cuban-American community) is a weak standing among Latinos, particulary the non-Cuban Latino community in Central Florida, attributable in no small part to his vocal opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. Indeed, even if he defeats Meek, if Rubio gets waxed among Florida Latinos, Republicans will have an especially graphic illustration of the continuing political peril of opposing legalization of undocumented workers, even when advanced by a Latino politician.

The real acid test for Republicans on immigration could come in California, the state where in 1994 GOP governor Pete Wilson fatally alienated Latino voters from his party for years to come by championing a cutoff of public benefits for undocumented workers (a far less draconian proposal than immediate deportation, it should be noted). Underdog conservative gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner has made his campaign all about reviving Wilson’s proposal. If Republican front-runner Meg Whitman can crush Poizner without any accomodation of his views on immigration, it could help her overcome a problem with Latino voters that emanates not only from Democrat Jerry Brown’s longstanding ties to the Latino community, but from the fact that her campaign chairman is none other than Pete Wilson.

In any event, whether it’s now or later, in 2010 or in 2012 and beyond, the Republican Party is going to have to deal with the political consequences of its base’s hostility to the levels of Latino immigration, and to growing demands for steps ranging from benefit cutoffs to deportation of undocumented workers. With the Tea Partiers exemplifying instensely held grassroots conservative demands for a more aggressively anti-immigration posture, even as the political costs of obeying these demands continues to rise, Republicans will be juggling explosives on this issue for the foreseeable future.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/people/vpickering/

Democracy as a Free Lunch for Islamofascists

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As I am sure you have noticed, one of the big conservative talking points in recent months has been that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats despise democracy because they have (sic!) used “revolutionary methods” to (sic!) “cram down” health reform against the manifest wishes of the American people, who wisely oppose socialism. Fortunately, Republicans are determined to help Americans “take back their country” in November.

But at the very same time, bless them, conservatives can’t help but express some long-held negative feelings about this small-d-democratic claptrap. One sign is their great hostility to any efforts to encourage higher levels of voting (though this is typically framed as opposition to “voter fraud,” evidence for which is completely lacking). Another is the Tea Party theory that there are absolute limits on the size and cost of government that either are or should be enshrined in the Constitution or enforced by the states, regardless of the results of national elections. And still another involves periodic bursts of outrage over people who don’t pay income taxes being allowed to vote.

This last meme got a boost very recently when estimates emerged that 47 percent of U.S. households won’t have any 2009 federal income tax liability.

“We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing,” sneered Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

Sean Hannity chipped in with alarums about the implications of “half of Americans not paying taxes.”

One conservative site took the AP story on this data and added this helpful subtitle: “Tax Day Is Just Christmas For Many.”

Another had an even more suggestive title: “Let’s Make You Spend More on Me,” along with a chart showing upward federal spending trends. This interpretation is clearly just a hop, skip and jump from the “culture of dependency” rhetoric most famously expressed by South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer in his speech comparing subsidized school lunch beneficiaries with stray animals who shouldn’t be encouraged with free food. And in retrospect, Bauer showed some unorthodox brilliance in galvanizing conservative anger about socialist “free lunch” redistribution toward kids who are literally receiving free lunches.

Now the various conservative “analysts” of the free-lunch, free-rider phenomenon rarely go to the trouble of acknowledging that most of that lucky 47 percent not owing federal income taxes (which represent less than half of federal revenues) pay high and very regressive federal payroll taxes, not to mention even more regressive state and local sales and property taxes. Nor do they note that most non-federal-income-tax-paying households are either retirees living on savings and retirement benefits or working poor families with kids (the beneficiaries of those child tax credits that conservatives are always promoting as “pro-family” policies). And I’ve yet to see even one concede that the 47 percent figure is a temporary spike attributable to the recession and to short-term tax credits that will expire with the economic stimulus program.

While the reverse-class-warfare subtext of some of the conservative angst about alleged tax-and-benefit freeloaders is pretty clear, there are those who would link it to an even more lurid, culture-war theme. Check out this remarkable weekend post from National Review’s Mark Steyn, who compared our system of “representation without taxation to” — no, I’m not making this up! — Muslim oppression of non-Muslims. Gaze in awe:

United States income tax is becoming the 21st-century equivalent of the “jizya” — the punitive tax levied by Muslim states on their non-Muslim citizens: In return for funding the Islamic imperium, the infidels were permitted to carry on practicing their faith. Likewise, under the American jizya, in return for funding Big Government, the non-believers are permitted to carry on practicing their faith in capitalism, small business, economic activity, and the other primitive belief systems to which they cling so touchingly.

So there you have it: socialism and Islamofascism nicely bound up in the policies of that madrassa-attending elitist, Barack Obama.

However you slice it, the conservative commitment to democracy sometimes seems limited to those “real Americans” who think right and vote right. At a minimum, progressives should not let them combine such attitudes with pious invocations of the Popular Will.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/katerkate/

The Cold War Is Over, But the Nukes Are Still Here

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama sure is spending a lot of time worrying about nuclear weapons this week. Today’s Nuclear Security Summit – a meeting of over 40 world leaders in Washington, D.C. – caps seven days of highly publicized events on nuclear security.

The attention lavished on atomic weapons feels almost anachronistic, invoking a Cold War-era standoff that now seems so distant. Twenty-five years ago, I was a third grader at St. Joan of Arc in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Once a month, Ms. Elliot would trot my class into the hallway where we’d kneel down and clasp our hands behind our necks. This wasn’t some strange Catholic school ritual – we were “protecting” ourselves from a Soviet nuclear attack.

While I realize now that this defensive maneuver wouldn’t have kept me safe from a direct hit on the jungle gym, the looming threat of a mushroom cloud over the American Midwest felt real.

It doesn’t today. The end of the Cold War, years of American military dominance and improving, if occasionally frustrating, relations with Moscow have effectively banished the threat of mutually assured destruction. Beyond Russia, it’s nearly impossible to imagine China, perhaps the United States’ “near-peer” military competitor but also its financial Siamese twin, launching its nuclear weapons.

But nuclear security must be important – just glance at Obama’s schedule. Before signing the New START accord with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev last Thursday, his administration released its Nuclear Posture Review, an important document that redefines the way America will use the 1550 deployed warheads New START permits. And today the president is convening the summit of world leaders in Washington, D.C.

It’s not only this week. These events are part of a yearlong effort that began last April when President Obama spoke about his vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

It’s a long-term goal to be sure — Obama has been clear that America would retain its arsenal as long as others did. But it’s hardly a liberal fantasy — conservative icons like former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz have joined forces with mainstream Democrats like former Senator Sam Nunn and Defense Secretary Bill Perry to promote a nuclear-free world.

They’re following the legacy of Ronald Reagan, who nearly signed on to sweeping nuclear restrictions with Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland in 1986, and George H.W. Bush, who signed the START treaty in 1991.

So with no Cold War threat, what’s the urgency? Why is the president wasting time negotiating with countries that wouldn’t dare attack us anyway?

Here’s why — it’s not state-sponsored atomic destruction that’s the threat. It’s the al-Qaeda operative with a nuclear suitcase. That sounds crazy, right? Then again, we never could have imagined that three airliners could bring down the Twin Towers and slam into the Pentagon. President Obama realizes that a nuclear arsenal in the hands of nation-states still poses a threat, albeit from stateless ones.

How, then, does a stuffy gathering of world leaders at a conference center in Washington, D.C. keep the bomb away from a small-fry terrorist? First, curbing nuclear proliferation depends on the large nuclear powers — U.S., Russia, China, U.K. and France — showing a serious and sustained effort towards nuclear disarmament that convinces the smaller nuclear powers — India, Pakistan and Israel — and nuclear weapons aspirants — North Korea and Iran — to feel comfortable without them. That dialogue needs to start on a big stage, particularly for American allies India and Pakistan, who may want to do the right thing but happen to be mortal enemies.

What’s more, it’s the North Koreas, Irans and Pakistans of the world that stand the greatest chance of selling nuclear technology to the black market’s highest bidder. Getting those countries to swear off nuclear weapons planning is critical. Just ask A.Q. Khan — he might be a hero as the father of the Pakistani A-bomb, but he has also sold nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea in the 1980s and 1990s for tens of millions of dollars.

We need nation-states to control their nuclear scientists, and getting everyone on the same page — as Obama’s doing — is the first step to achieving that goal.

We are long-removed from cowering in the hallway of my Catholic school in Ohio, but that doesn’t mean the nuclear threat died with the Cold War. It has simply changed. That’s why the Obama administration is spending so much time yanking America’s nuclear security policy into the 21st century.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/travlr/

Turnout Rumblings

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As we inch closer to the November 2010 elections, some of the early indicia affecting turnout are showing remarkable numbers predictive of an unusually high turnout for a midterm election.

Now it should come as no great surprise that when asked by USA Today/Gallup if they are “more enthusiastic than usual” about voting in November, 69 percent of Republicans respond affirmatively. This comports with the general sense that Republicans are getting ready to joyfully snake dance to the polls in November to get rid of the socialist usurpers in Washington and restore the natural order of things. But as Nate Silver has pointed out, the same survey shows 57 percent of Democrats expressing unusual enthusiasm as well — a higher percentage than ever registered before a midterm by voters in either party, until now.

At pollster.com, turnout guru Michael McDonald of George Mason University stares at the data and suggests we could be seeing a historic turnout rates this November, since overall enthusiasm levels are about where they were two years ago. He’s pretty sure turnout will exceed that of the last midterm election, in 2006, which was considered a very good turnout year by historic standards.

Normally high overall turnout in a midterm election would be good news for Democrats, but turnout predictions based on voter enthusiasm must note the advantage GOPers have on that measurement. We’ll see if conservative excitement about November can be sustained at its current high-pitch chattering whine, and if Democrats can maintain or increase their own level of engagement.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Neo-Confederate History Month

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As most readers have probably heard, Virginia’s Republican Governor Bob McDonnell got himself into hot water by declaring April “Confederate History Month,” in a proclamation that did not mention the rather pertinent fact that the Confederacy was a revolutionary (and by definition, treasonous) effort to maintain slavery against even the possibility of abolition.

After the predictable firestorm of criticism, McDonnell allowed that it must have been a mistake not to mention slavery in his proclamation. And then he repeated his rationale for the whole idea, which was, he claimed, simply a matter of promoting tourism in anticipation of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s outbreak. Tourism!

I’m sure most conservatives will consider McDonnell’s act of contrition sufficient, while many liberals will cynically conclude the whole thing was a dog whistle to the far Right, much like his earlier and less notorious commemoration of March 7-13 as Christian Heritage Week, in honor of the Christian Right’s revisionist theory that the Founders were theocrats at heart.

But as a white southerner old enough to remember the final years of Jim Crow, when every month was Confederate History Month, I have a better idea for McDonnell: Let’s have a Neo-Confederate History Month that draws attention to the endless commemorations of the Lost Cause that have wrought nearly as much damage as the Confederacy itself.

It would be immensely useful for Virginians and southerners generally to spend some time reflecting on the century or so of grinding poverty and cultural isolation that fidelity to the Romance in Gray earned for the entire region, regardless of race. Few Americans from any region know much about the actual history of Reconstruction, capped by the shameful consignment of African Americans to the tender mercies of their former masters, or about the systematic disenfranchisement of black citizens (and in some places, particularly McDonnell’s Virginia, of poor whites) that immediately followed.

A Neo-Confederate History Month could be thoroughly bipartisan. Republicans could enjoy greater exposure to the virulent racism of such progressive icons as William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson, not to mention Democratic New Deal crusaders in the South like Mississippi’s Theodore Bilbo. The capture of the political machinery of Republican and Democratic parties in a number of states, inside and beyond the South, by the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, would be an interesting subject for further study as well.

Most of all, a Neo-Confederate History Month could remind us of the last great effusion of enthusiasm for Davis and Lee and Jackson and all the other avatars of the Confederacy: the white southern fight to maintain racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. That’s when “Dixie” was played as often as the national anthem at most white high school football games in the South; when Confederate regalia were attached to state flags across the region; and when the vast constitutional and political edifice of pre-secession agitprop was brought back to life in the last-ditch effort to make the Second Reconstruction fail like the first.

Bob McDonnell should be particularly responsible, as a former Attorney General of his state, for reminding us all of the “massive resistance” doctrine preached by Virginia Senator Harry Byrd in response to federal judicial rulings and pending civil rights laws, and of the “interposition” theory of nullification spread most notably by Richmond News Leader editor James Jackson Kilpatrick.

Any Neo-Confederate History Month would be incomplete, of course, without reference to the contemporary conservative revival of states’ rights and nullification theories redolent of proto-Confederates, Confederates, and neo-Confederates.

Having flirted with such theories himself, Bob McDonnell probably wouldn’t be interested in discussing them in the context of Civil War history. But that’s okay: A greater public understanding of the exceptionally unsavory tradition that conservative Republicans are following in claiming that states can refuse to accept health care reform would be valuable without an explicit discussion of current politics.

So give it up, governor: If you are going to have a Confederate History Month, at least be honest enough to acknowledge that the legacy of the Confederacy didn’t die at Appomattox.

This item is cross-posted at The New Republic.

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