issue: Politics

Confidence-Building in the West Bank

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Last week, Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu issued a unilateral 10-month halt to Israeli settlement construction in parts of the West Bank. The moratorium is riddled with loopholes — it excludes projects in East Jerusalem, as well as those already underway, and exempts public buildings like schools and synagogues.**

Furthermore, cynics believe that Netanyahu proposed the suspension at a time of Palestinian political weakness, putting the onus to respond on a divided Arab leadership that has become increasingly fragile in the wake of President Mahmoud Abbas’ announcement that he will not seek another term as Palestinian president in next year’s already postponed elections.

That’s why this moment is so critical: The Obama administration could play a pivotal role in facilitating some sort of coherent Palestinian response — something (anything!) more than a quick dismissal. It could be the smallest of gestures — even issuing an official statement of acceptance of Israel’s freeze and pledging that the next Palestinian government would like to work with Israel on the peace process — but it must show the world some measure of Palestinian unity and resolve to move forward.

That’s how confidence-building measures work, and the Obama administration should help the Palestinians to remain unified enough to issue a coherent response.

**If you’ll permit a bit of a digression, that last loophole reminds me of an infamous rumor attributed to the Australian Embassy here in D.C. A few years ago, the staff apparently requested funding from Canberra to build a bar in one of the embassy’s back rooms. Twice rejected because Australia’s Foreign Ministry didn’t want to further its diplomatic corps’ rowdy reputation, the staff remained undeterred, and merely switched “bar” to “chapel” on the funding request’s third — and successful — attempt. The moral here is that you can call a facility whatever you want, but its use is the only thing that counts.

The Neoconservative Pere et Fils

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Senior Fellow Mike Signer has written a piece in Dissent magazine on Irving Kristol, his son, Bill, and the morphing of neoconservatism from an ideology of skepticism to one of hubris. An excerpt:

NEOCONSERVATISM, AS formulated by Irving Kristol, originated in privation, intellectual combat, and a reckoning with the harsh practical consequences of dangerous ideas. Irving Kristol’s parents were Eastern Europeans who arrived in America in the 1890s.  His father was a garment worker and later a clothing subcontractor; his mother gave birth to Irving in Brooklyn in 1920. When he was sixteen years old, he enrolled at the City College of New York (CCNY). Instead of paying much attention to classes, however, he dove into the extempore debate among the students.

The 1930s were a fervent time to be a student at CCNY. Fascism was taking hold in Italy, and communism was surging in the Soviet Union. The sometimes cheerful, sometimes angry clashes among students who were trying to decide where the world should go at this momentous period helped to launch an intellectual movement that was skeptical about the applications of pure theory.

Though it took decades for it to become “neoconservatism,” the roots of the movement lay in the young intellectuals’ effort to steer America away from the shoals of Stalinism, the horrible outgrowth of what had begun, decades earlier, as an ambitious political theory. This may help explain why Irving Kristol’s own political theory, for all its lushness and bombast, often counseled caution and modesty.  In a lecture he gave in 1970, he pronounced that “moral earnestness and intellectual sobriety” were the “elements . . . most wanted in a democracy.” Strikingly, he applied this ethic of restraint to democracy itself. In 1978, he wrote, “It is the fundamental fallacy of American foreign policy to believe, in face of the evidence, that all peoples, everywhere, are immediately ‘entitled’ to a liberal constitutional government—and a thoroughly democratic one at that.”

By contrast, in the years to come his son fixed neoconservative foreign policy on abstractions and evils—on metaphysics rather than physics—particularly when it came to democracy. As a result, the striking feature of Bill Kristol’s political theory is not the ideas but the extravagance surrounding them.  In a now-famous 1996 Foreign Affairsarticle co-authored with Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol wrote that Republicans should endorse a policy of “benevolent hegemony” that was “good for conservatives, good for America, and good for the world.” “America,” he added, “has the capacity to contain or destroy many of the world’s monsters, most of which can be found without much searching.”

Read the whole thing here.

Atlanta Mayoral Election: A Dog That Didn’t Bark

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Given the enormous attention that was paid by the chattering classes of Washington to gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey last month, you’d think any significant election would be deeply analyzed for possible national political implications. But earlier this week, one of America’s major cities, Atlanta, had a mayoral election that largely passed notice at all outside Georgia.

As it happens, state senator Kasim Reed, a Democrat, narrowly defeated city councilwoman Mary Norwood, an independent, in a runoff called when Norwood fell a bit short of a majority in the general election on November 3.  (note: Norwood has demanded a recount, but virtually no one outside her campaign believes it will reverse the outcome).

Had a thousand votes changed hands, and Norwood prevailed, I suspect we’d be hearing a lot from national Republicans about the significance of this election. After all, Reed was endorsed by the Georgia Democratic Party, whose 2010 gubernatorial front-runner, former Gov. Roy Barnes, cut ads for his fellow-Democrat.  Moreover, Norwood’s candidacy was fueled initially by her opposition to a local property tax hike, which could have made her a player in the Right’s national tax revolt narrative.  On a more sinister level, some conservatives might have played with a racial angle: Norwood was the first viable white candidate for mayor in Atlanta since 1981, while Reed is the protégé of outgoing African-American mayor Shirley Franklin, herself the protégé of the first two black mayors of the city, Andrew Young and the late Maynard Jackson.

The vote did in fact break largely (though not strictly) on racial lines, though in part that’s because the ideological differences between the candidate actually diminished during the runoff campaign.  Norwood displeased some early Republican backers by claiming to have voted for every Democratic presidential nominee since 1992, and also sought to outflank Reed among Atlanta’s sizable GLBT population by announcing her support for gay marriage.

We’ll never know for sure what sort of spin might have been applied to the results on Fox News had the result been different.  But there’s another mayoral runoff on tap December 12 in another southern sun belt center, Houston, with a similar racial angle, but with different ideological dynamics.  As in Atlanta, a white female candidate, city controller Annise Parker, ran first in the general election, and an African-American man, former city attorney Gene Locke, came from back of the pack to finish second.  Both candidates are considered progressive Democrats.  But the crucial difference from Atlanta is that Parker is an open lesbian, and Locke is flirting with an alliance with hard-line conservatives who warn that Parker’s election (along with that of two openly gay city council candidates) would represent a “gay takeover” of the city.   We’ll see how that one turns out, and whether any national dogs bark.

The Public Option as Symbol

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In recent days, there seems to have been a shift in the progressive community over the question of whether the public option, in its current state, is still worth fighting for. Some on the militantly pro-public-option left aren’t responding well to the weakening front.

Over at Hullabaloo, the influential Digby gives the game away. She cites Ezra Klein, who wrote today:

Having something called a public option is not, in the end analysis, as important as achieving the goals of the public option, and at this point, the policy itself is getting so watered down that it might be worth attempting to achieve its goals in a more straightforward fashion.

But Digby is having none of that:

Ezra believes that if the votes aren’t there for a decent public option then the horse trading should be around getting something good in return for giving up the public option rather than negotiating the terms of the public option. That would make sense if the public option were just another feature of the health care bill. But it is not. It is the central demand of the liberal base of the Democratic Party in this rube goldberg health care plan and has long since gone way beyond a policy to become a symbol.

Perhaps that is wrong on policy grounds. People will argue about that forever. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is no longer a matter of policy but rather a matter of political power. And to that extent it cannot be “bargained away” for something like better subsidies, even if it made sense. “Bargaining away” the Public Option is also the bargaining away of liberal influence and strength.

[…]

Again, as a matter of policy I don’t know that the public option actually means much anymore. But as a matter of politics, it’s very important.

Let the boldness – and the destructiveness – of that declaration sink in. On the most important progressive policy achievement in a generation, Digby says forget the policy – it’s the symbolism that matters.

Digby argues that the implications of the public option extend far beyond health care, that “powerful people” are “desperate that the liberals are not seen to win this battle.” Funny, because I thought the way that progressives win this battle is by making health care accessible and affordable to millions of Americans who currently don’t have it. According to some very smart people, the public option is playing a steadily diminishing role in achieving that goal. But don’t tell that to Digby, whose position now boils down to: Why bother with policy advances when we can have symbolic victories (or, heck, defeats)?

From the start, PPI has argued that the fixation on the public option has been distracting us from the more important conversation we could be having about making the exchanges more robust. Paul Starr, in an op-ed for the New York Times on Monday, said as much in a column titled “Fighting the Wrong Health Care Battle”:

[G]iving the exchanges the necessary authority to regulate private insurers could solve many of the problems that motivated the public option in the first place. Strengthening that authority and accelerating the timetable for reform are what liberals in Congress should be looking for in a deal.

But Starr is, of course, commenting on policy. For Digby, that’s no longer what the health care debate is about.

Obama’s Afghanistan Speech

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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

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

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

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

2. Explain our forces’ mission.

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

4. Clearly outline the strategy for Pakistan.

5. State his interpretation of an exit strategy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to Progressive Fix!

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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

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

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

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

Getting Real About Governing

But that was then. What now?

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

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

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

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

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

Enriching the Progressive Debate

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Missed Opportunity on Lobbying

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving to the Right, Without Direction

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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

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

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

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

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

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Yet More on the Filibuster and Polarization

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time to Panic for Obama?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presidential approval ratings since World War II

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

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

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

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

Charlie Crist’s Blasphemy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accounting Reform for…Biofuels?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

From yesterday’s Boston Globe comes an op-ed on the need for sound accounting guidelines when it comes to bioenergy and greenhouse gas emissions:

The problem: treaties and laws now treat all forms of bioenergy as carbon neutral and therefore completely non-polluting. In reality, how much bioenergy reduces greenhouse gases depends on the source of the plant material. The right rules will encourage the development of fast-growing grasses and trees that can greatly increase the amount of carbon absorbed by plants on marginal land and thereby reduce global warming. The wrong rules will encourage clearing of forests, which releases carbon dioxide and may even increase greenhouse gases while also threatening biodiversity.

[…]

[T]he climate bill working its way through Congress shares this error.

If the error continues globally, it gives oil firms or electric utilities that must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions a false incentive to switch to those forms of bioenergy that result from clearing forests. Several studies predict they will do so on a large scale. By contrast, the right accounting will give entrepreneurs the incentive to commercialize the great technical innovations in generating more carbon from the earth’s land and converting it efficiently into useable fuel.

The op-ed was co-written by Vinod Khosla and Tim Searchinger, both big names in biofuels, for different reasons. Khosla, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, is a big investor in bioenergy.

Searchinger, meanwhile, is known as a skeptic of biofuels. In 2008, he co-authored a study that found that, taking into account the conversion of forest and grassland into new cropland (as grain is diverted to biofuel production), biofuels actually increase greenhouse gas emissions. More recently, he co-authored a paper in the journal Science that looked into the failure of the Kyoto Protocol and U.S. climate legislation to account for emissions from biofuels.

The op-ed finds common ground in recognizing the promise of bioenergy, even as it calls for a more informed approach to its role in the global energy picture. All too often, the prefix “bio” lulls people into a false sense of enviro-comfort. But as Khosla and Searchinger suggest, if the biofuel you’re putting into your car came from crops planted on — or that eventually led to — a cleared forest, then chances are you’re not helping the climate much at all.

It may seem an obscure area of cap-and-trade, but the op-ed actually underscores the importance of rigorous research and strict accounting in developing a climate bill. Khosla and Searchinger urge policy makers working on cap-and-trade to distinguish bioenergy by its source and production process. The last thing we need is a climate bill that ends up wiping out swathes of forestland, all because of that misleading prefix.

(h/t to NRDC’s Switchboard blog)

The ACORN Derangement Syndrome Goes Viral

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

When you’ve been away from blogging, and from regular access to political news, for more or less a month, as I have, there’s a lot of stuff to catch up on. But I have to say, the thing I missed that amazes me the most, while confirming some of my own uncharitable fears about conservatives, was last week’s PPP poll showing that a majority of self-identified Republicans think the struggling and marginal grassroots organization ACORN stole the 2008 election for Barack Obama.

Matt Compton, Adam Serwer and Eric Kleefield all offered some thoughts on this poll, and Jason Zengerle compared it to the Democratic belief that Bush stole the 2000 elections. (Ed. note: I wrote about the poll here.) But I somehow don’t think most progressives are fully grasping the centrality of ACORN to the conservative world-view these days.

I’ve written about this several times over the last thirteen months, but bear with me: ACORN has assumed an all-purpose demonic role for Republicans. They were, in the lurid view of Fox News enthusiasts (embraced on at least one occasion by the McCain-Palin ticket) the cause of the mortgage crisis and the financial meltdown, thanks to the alleged help they provided to shiftless people to obtain mortgages they couldn’t or wouldn’t pay. They then demanded bailouts for their clients. And because a whole lotta socialism was necessary to keep them afloat, they stole the election for their close ally Barack Obama. Coincidentally, of course, and irrelevant to the narrative of ACORN running the country, was the fact that the group is one of the most visibly minority-oriented organizations in national public life.

The fact that there is virtually no empirical evidence for any of these contentions about ACORN (particularly the election-stealing stuff, which is an absolute hallucination by any standard) hasn’t much mattered; the group was far, far too convenient a scapegoat for everything that displeased conservatives since September of 2008.

But in talking about this so many times, it never really occurred to me that a majority of Republicans bought into the ACORN Derangement Syndrome, with only a quarter of them rejecting the idea that this group stole the 2008 elections. Analogizing this to the Democratic reaction to Florida 2008 is ludicrous; Gore did win the popular vote, Florida was incredibly disputed, and the Supreme Court did shut down the recount to get Bush across the finish line. There is not a shred of evidence that Obama didn’t legitimately and decisively win the election, and no significant Republican spokesman doubted it at the time. It took a full year of conservative shrieking about ACORN to instill this crazy theory into the consciousness of rank-and-file Republicans, nicely validating their hatred of Obama and their bizarre claims that he’s some sort of totalitarian revolutionary determined to destroy the Constitution.

It’s a case history in viral demagoguery of the most toxic sort, and reputable Republicans should be even more upset about it than I am.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Progressives and the Filibuster-Round 2

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

One of the functions of The Progressive Fix is to not only to provide an online outlet for “pragmatic progressives” but also to demonstrate that their antipathy to ideological litmus tests extends to their own ranks.

In that spirit, I will take issue with a post published here on Friday by Scott Winship, who is an esteemed friend and colleague, and my predecessor as managing editor over at The Democratic Strategist. Scott offered a defense of the Senate filibuster on traditional, anti-tyranny-of-the-majority grounds, and then suggested that the real problem in the Senate is partisan polarization, with the solution being reforms in primary laws to reduce the power of the “ideological extremes.”

To be clear, my disagreement with Scott on this issue is only partial. I am not hell-bent on eliminating the filibuster as a possibility under the Senate rules (though not opposed to that step in principle, either). But what I object to categorically is the routinization of filibuster threats in recent years, to the point where the Senate has come perilously close to creating an entirely new, non-constitutionally-sanctioned 60-vote requirement for the enactment of all significant legislation (other than provisions taken up under specified exceptions to the usual rules, like the Congressional Budget Act).

Since the Senate already has a built-in red-state bias, a supermajority requirement would basically represent a death sentence for progressive initiatives in the near future.  Yes, I know some Democrats (though not me) celebrated the filibuster when the shoe was on the other foot a few years back, but on the other hand, nobody was excoriating Republicans for demanding that their own senators vote for cloture, were they?

All Filibuster, All the Time

And that’s the crux of the matter today — not the possibility of filibusters, but the elimination of any disincentive to engage in a filibuster on every single piece of legislation. Some senators are acting as though the right to vote one’s conscience or interests on a bill is identical to the right to obstruct it by denying it a floor vote, meaning that the normal practice of party discipline on procedural matters somehow does not extend to the most important procedural matter: votes to end a filibuster — i.e., cloture votes. So even if Democrats have (as they do right now) an improbable and (probably) unsustainable 60 Senate votes, that’s not enough unless they also have 60 votes for a specific bill. That particular shoe has not been on the other foot in living memory, but even if it had been, I certainly think Republicans should have been free to sanction their members for combining with the opposition to bring the Senate, and the country, to a standstill.

If Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson considers it a matter of deep principle to vote against cloture to block final passage of health care reform (probably for the next decade or so, given the precedents on this topic), that’s well and good, but they should have to pay a price — such as losing a rung on the seniority ladder.

Scott, as noted above, argues that the current situation in the Senate is the product of “polarization,” which he seems to blame equally on both parties, and offers the remedy of electoral reforms to reduce that polarization. By this I assume he means some form of open primary. Scott is a very smart man who knows, I am sure, that “polarization” hasn’t simply been produced by closed primaries. Much of it has resulted from a gradual process of ideological sorting-out between the two major parties that is entirely healthy and natural, as compared to the longstanding dependence on ethnic, religious, and regional factors for party identification that may have made “bipartisanship” technically easier but didn’t really offer most voters (e.g., southerners choosing between Democratic and Republican conservatives and northeasterners choosing between Democratic and Republican liberals) more choice than they have today. If you look at the Senate right now, it’s hard to identify more than a few senators whose behavior would change if they were exposed, say, to primary voting by registered independents (many hard-core southern conservative Republicans are from states with no party registration at all).

Dealing with the Party of No

More to the point, the unity of Senate Republicans right now flows less from the fear of primary opponents from the hard right than it does from a corporate decision by the GOP as an institution that it must destroy the Obama administration by any means necessary. A contributing factor to this decision is the strange but overwhelmingly maintained belief of Republicans that the only way to distance themselves from the hyper-partisan Bush administration’s disastrous record is by claiming it was too liberal! When it comes to big-ticket issues like health care reform and climate change, Republicans have clearly shifted to the right during the last few years, even as Democrats have consistently sought middle ground (e.g., market-based carbon cap-and-trade and a “premium support” approach to universal health care).

So in my opinion, the immediate solution to the polarization of the Senate isn’t an impossible effort to reach accommodation with more than a very few Republicans, or letting a few “centrists” write every bill. Instead, there ought to be a reasonable insistence that Democrats reject the supermajority requirement and support the party on cloture votes as a matter of course. We can then maintain our big-tent party by letting heterodox Democrats stray on final passage of key legislation as they wish. And we can also invite Republicans to go to the country with a stirring, populist campaign slogan of “throw the cloturers out.”

RIP Compassionate Conservatism

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Republican message on extending health care coverage can be summed up in two words: “Bah, humbug.”

In taking a purely obstructionist stance, the GOP has evinced scant empathy for tens of millions of fellow Americans who lack basic protection against illness or injury. So much for compassionate conservatism.

On Saturday, not a single Republican voted to allow the Senate to even consider a bill to expand coverage and reform health insurance markets. When the House passed its version of health reform, just one Republican voted aye. He is Rep. Joseph Cao, a freshman from normally Democratic New Orleans.

Republicans, of course, are under no moral or political compunction to support Democratic proposals for health reform. But since they haven’t offered any credible alternatives of their own, it’s reasonable to conclude that they don’t care all that much about fixing America’s broken health care system.

Sure, House Republicans proffered their version of “reform” earlier this month. It would spend just $61 billion over 10 years and leave the percentage of uninsured Americans in 10 years exactly where it is today – at 83 percent. Thanks to population growth, there would actually be more uninsured people than today.

In opposing serious efforts to expand coverage, Republicans say they are trying to protect Americans against runaway deficits, not to mention death panels, publicly financed abortions and other confected horrors. They rail against President Obama and the Democrats for proposing to pile a costly new health care entitlement atop others we don’t know how we’ll pay for.

That’s actually a valid concern, one that progressives should take more seriously. But the GOP’s newfound fiscal piety would be more convincing if President Bush and party leaders had not muscled through Congress a massive new Medicare drug entitlement just six years ago.

Showing their customary solicitude for America’s haves – Medicare offers all seniors the basic health coverage the uninsured lack – Republicans insisted on creating a universal entitlement, rather than targeting help for truly needy seniors. At first projected to cost $534 billion over 10 years, revised estimates in 2005 put the bill’s price tag at $1.2 trillion. That’s several hundred billion dollars more than the bill passed this weekend by Senate Democrats. David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, called the 2003 prescription drug bill “probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s.”

In contrast, the Senate Democrats’ bill is paid for. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would cut the federal deficit by $130 billion in the first decade and by more than $500 billion in the second decade.

But there’s a hitch, and it’s a big one. Cutting future deficits refers only to the public costs of expanding medical coverage and reforming U.S. health care markets. That’s not at all the same thing as “bending the curve” of health care cost growth. Slowing the unsustainable pace at which medical costs in America are growing requires confronting the perverse incentives and inefficiencies that plague health care delivery. It also means rebalancing the big entitlement programs, as retiring baby boomers swell the number of people receiving Medicare benefits.

This is the big piece of unfinished business facing both health care reformers and President Obama. The Senate bill expands coverage and cuts the federal deficit. According to some leading budget analysts, however, it doesn’t do enough to slow down the rising health costs that plague the vast majority of U.S. workers and that handicap many U.S. firms in global competition.

They deserve some compassion, too.

The Progressive Challenge in Afghanistan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Lorelei Kelly at the New Strategic Security Initiative issues a thoughtful challenge to progressives over at the Huffington Post:

If progressives really want to help forward the policy discussion, they should develop a set of alternatives premised on enduring commitment and solidarity with the Afghan people (local grants through the National Solidarity Program is a good example), and not pose them as a tradeoff for troop levels. Heck, even the commanding general in Afghanistan says this conflict has no military solution. Take that and run with it. But doing so means exercising forbearance when talking about the military presence. Uniforms are going to be part of the picture for a while. What the alliance is actually doing on the ground will determine the outcome. Tactics are already changing. But prioritizing civilians will mean that soldiers bear more of the risk.

We need to come to terms with that.

Any success must also include a significant shift in resources and coordination to make sure Afghans actually receive support to own their future. This kind of partnered consultation can start despite Karzai in office. The Afghan people know who isn’t corrupt. We need to go national and local at the same time because promising upstarts exist at both levels. The goal is a process — and so will be tough to measure, which is why a commitment is important. All sorts of policies here at home provide illustrations. From building the national highway system to public education, broadly distributed achievement through time take time. The laser-focused message the Afghan people need to hear is “we’re on this path with you.” We need to commit.

[…]

The president will put forward his decision soon. It will involve a troop increase. If progressives stay in full opposition mode, they will exist on the margin of the debate right when we need them setting the agenda. Exit to the sidelines will also undercut future efforts to advocate a new strategy for U.S. security. We are moving from a time when we could contain threats to one where we must minimize them. This can only happen through sustained engagement.

The progressive community would do well to consider Lorelei’s words before blindly opposing a troop increase. Even Code Pink has recognized the need for engagement and moderated its position. After all, America’s military is in Afghanistan to protect the Afghan population and promote peace. Those are progressive values.