issue: Politics

Health Reform Differences Narrow

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

At the beginning of this week on the health care front, one thing clear is that the differences between what the House and Senate are likely to vote on are not as large as everyone expected a few weeks ago. Harry Reid’s advancing a public option bill with (it appears) a state opt-out, and the House is going with a public option that will negotiate rates instead of pegging payments to Medicare. Had the Senate gone with a weak trigger or something like co-ops, or the House had insisted on the Medicare peg, it could have caused some very serious problems down the road.

However you happen to feel about the substance of these nuances, anything that steadily narrows the gaps between Senate and House Democrats is a step towards enactment of health reform this year. Or at least that’s how it looks to me from an internet cafe a very long way from Washington.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Final Score in Honduras: Obama 1, Republicans 0

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

News this morning is that after simmering for four months, the political crisis that has paralyzed Honduras is drawing to a close. In an agreement (English translation) between deposed President Mel Zelaya and de facto leader Roberto Micheletti’s representatives, Zelaya’s fate will be thrown to Congress. With the legislative body’s approval, Zelaya would be lame duck president in a government of national unity. Elections would go forward as planned at the end of November, with neither of the dueling presidents as candidate. To ensure the army doesn’t get involved in politics for the remainder of the campaign, control of the Armed Forces will be transferred to the national elections supervisor, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

Now comes the follow through — making sure Zelaya serves out his term and steps down in favor of whomever the Honduran people elect in a month in a free and fair election, one in which neither side is pushing their thumb down on the scales. Then the new government should turn to the real matter at hand. Not pushing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s agenda, not trying to suck up to the U.S., but bettering the lot of the people in the hemisphere’s fourth poorest country.

While both sides are claiming to be vindicated by the agreement, the real winners are obviously the Honduran people. The embargo of aid and disruption of relations with its neighbors had put the already poor country at a disadvantage, and the stubbornness of both sides was evidence that they were looking out for their own interests and not those of the Honduran people.

Another winner was the measured, responsible foreign policy of the Obama administration. Throughout the crisis, President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and their team have been seen as the steady hands at the tiller. They looked to resolve the situation and respect the rule of law. The Obama team used political and economic pressure to bring both sides to the negotiating table; threat of continued ostracism kept them talking.

By contrast, Zelaya’s ostensible patron, Hugo Chávez, was proven to be ineffectual. Chávez threatened to invade, thinking that two wrongs would make a right in supporting Zelaya. But Chávez was all helpless bluster, eventually calling on Obama to solve the problem.

U.S. conservatives also did not do themselves any favors, with South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint and the editorial team at the Wall Street Journal standing out in particular. DeMint, who should have learned that South Carolina Republicans shouldn’t get involved in Latin American escapades, flew down to Tegucigalpa earlier this month and endorsed the coup government as “working hard to follow the rule of law” when it overthrew the democratically elected leader of Honduras at gunpoint.

But while it’s easy (and fun) to point out how conservatives were on the wrong side of the coup, there are deeper issues at stake. Writing last week in the Los Angeles Times, respected Latin America academic Abraham Lowenthal said:

What brings Honduras, and Central America more generally, back again and again to center stage in Washington debates on Latin America is not the strategic, security or economic importance of the region to the United States. On the contrary, it is precisely the minimal tangible significance of Central America to the United States in economic, political and military terms that allows U.S. policymakers of conflicting tendencies to indulge in grandstanding in framing policies toward that nearby and vulnerable region.

He’s right. The US needs to focus on Central America at a policy level. Crime is up significantly in the region, and — more alarmingly — is getting organized. Maras — originally street gangs started by El Savadorans both there and in the U.S. — have been evolving into regional cartels transporting drugs and flaunting the rule of law. Governments in Central America aren’t strong enough to face this threat, and there are troubling signs they are being co-opted both at the local and national level. The potential for narco-states exists in the region.

Mark Ribbing called for a special envoy to Mexico and the Caribbean. What we really need is a special envoy to Mexico and Central America to address the interrelated issues the isthmus faces: gangs, drugs, and illegal immigration. Additionally, that envoy needs resources to help fight these problems and not just be another talking head. While the previous administration pushed the Mérida Initiative as a “Plan Colombia” for our southern neighbor, we need a “Plan Mesoamerica” to help develop stronger institutions in the region that can stand up to illegal activity, whether it comes in fatigues, a tailored suit, or gang tattoos.

Conservatism Ascendant?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Conservative bloggers are crowing about a new Gallup poll showing that 40 percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, topping moderates (36 percent) and liberals (20 percent). The findings represent a change from the 2005-2008 period, when moderates tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.

There are other areas of concern here for progressives. For one thing, the number of independents describing themselves as conservative rose from 29 percent in 2008 to 35 percent. While political scientists have long warned that ideological self-identification surveys should be taken with a grain of salt — Americans, for the most part, don’t think of themselves in ideological terms — a breakdown of respondents’ views on different issues reflects the same movement. On government regulation of business, labor unions, gun rights, and several other issues, the public has also moved to the right, according to the Gallup poll.

There are several possible reasons for the shift. One, with Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, it’s perhaps inevitable that the uncommitted middle would lean toward checking progressive control of government. In addition, conservatives who may have been turned off by the disastrous Bush administration and drifted to the middle may be coming back home in the age of Obama.

Finally, one can’t overstate the media’s influence in shaping public opinion. Since day one, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the right-wing noise machine have hammered the administration as unapologetically liberal (even Marxist!), a narrative that is now gospel among the conservative base — and perhaps influences independents as well. But the fact is that the president has been genuinely pragmatic, earnestly seeking common ground with the opposition party and urging caution and prudence on a whole host of issues. As Newsweek put it this week, he “governs like a cerebral consensus builder,” and he’s even taken a lot of grief from the lefty base because of it.

But we shouldn’t be too concerned about the Gallup poll — at least not yet. For one thing, its results are actually nothing blindingly new. Since 1992, Gallup’s results on its political ideology surveys have been generally consistent, with conservatives usually finishing in the 36 percent-40 percent range, moderates fluctuating from 36 percent-43 percent, and liberals ranging from 16 percent to 22 percent. Rather than signaling a new conservative backlash sparked by Barack Obama, as right-wing activists like to believe, the poll actually shows a swing within a narrow range. It’s not great, but it’s not catastrophic.

Another reason for comfort is that the Gallup survey comes on the heels of another poll that showed the GOP at its lowest favorability rating in a decade. Such has been the decline in the Republican Party’s fortunes that even during a year when the percentage of independents identifying themselves as conservative rose six percentage points, the GOP still can’t make any gains.

The lessons are obvious. One, even during a period of conservative resurgence, the Republican Party is still a broken brand. But progressives cannot continue to rely on Republican ineptitude and tone-deafness to keep them in power. We have to assume that the GOP will get its act together at some point and make a play for the middle. Which brings up the second lesson: this is a big country with a whole lot of interests, beliefs, and values to navigate and negotiate. Candidate Obama became President Obama because he understood that and made the tent bigger. It’s up to progressives to make sure that the tent remains big and welcoming.

Defense Authorization Bill a Good First Step

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a February address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama promised to “cut Cold War weapons systems we don’t use.” By signing today’s $680 billion defense authorization bill, it’s remarkable at how well he succeeded.

Trimmed from the budget are more F-22 fighter jets, VH-71 presidential helicopters, and Air Force search-and-rescue helicopters. In short, we own an acceptable quantity and/or quality of these systems to achieve their stated missions, freeing money that could more efficiently be spent elsewhere. The simple message comes down to this: In the middle of two major military deployments, spending on weapons we don’t need makes America weaker because we’re short-changing those involved in our current fights.

The president has made a solid first step in breaking the iron triangle of defense contractors, Congress, and the Pentagon. However, the war is hardly over. If you want to dunk your head in a bucket of cold water, read Winslow Wheeler’s reality check:

In 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year. Despite that, I see signs that we might be on the cusp of a change for the better.

This past week, as the Senate debated the Department of Defense (DOD) appropriations bill, a tiny bipartisan group of senators stood up to fix an important part of the gigantic mess in our defenses. This minuscule bunch lost at every turn when the votes were counted, but for the first time I can remember, senators revealed previously unrecognized aspects of their colleagues’ appalling pork-mongering — and took action against it. In the process, a few supremely powerful senators who have been corrupting the process were exposed as contemptible frauds. Now, if only the press would notice.

Wheeler is referring to a new budgetary trick used by a group of senators — led Sens. Inouye (D-HI) and Cochran (R-MS) — to raid the “Operations and Maintenance” account, a little-noticed fund that pays for things like pilot training and basic equipment upkeep, to finance home-state weapons projects that even the military says it doesn’t want.

Reforming the weapons acquisition culture is like turning an aircraft carrier 180 degrees. The White House and Secretary Gates have started, but the next several Pentagon budgets will show us where we really are.

The Good Health Reform Idea That Everyone’s Ignoring

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Writing in The Hill’s Congress Blog, Joseph Minarik of the business group Committee for Economic Development brings up an idea that unfortunately has been largely passed over in the health care debate:

Short of starting over with a fundamentally different bill, CED believes that the most constructive change to the current legislation would be the “Free Choice” amendment of Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The CED letter urges Congress to address the underlying problems in the healthcare system: the absence of choice and competition.  Today, 77 percent of private-sector employees with coverage have no choice of insurance carrier. The Finance Committee bill protects this monopoly, leaving 200 million Americans with no choice of health plan.  This system, without competition and without portable coverage for employees, would have the same fundamental problems that we have today.  The legislation in Congress therefore merely expands the status quo and makes its exploding costs even worse.

The disappearance of the Sen. Wyden’s Free Choice Act in the legislative wrangling over health care remains one of the more unfortunate turns in the whole process. The idea had bipartisan support, was well-liked by many progressives, and was genuinely transformative.

The Wyden amendment seeks to add that key element in the act’s title – choice – into the current legislation. Under the plan, employers are required to offer their employees a choice of either participating in the employer’s health benefits plan, or a voucher equal to the value of the employer plan that the worker can then use to purchase coverage in the health insurance exchange. Even better, if the employee can find a cheaper alternative on the exchange, she can keep the change from the voucher.

In the long run, this will have the effect of expanding the pool of enrollees in the health exchanges, maximizing efficiencies of scale, and slowly moving us away from the regressive, taxpayer-subsidized employer-based health system. Perhaps most obviously, it strengthens the consumer’s hand by giving her the freedom to decide what kind of plan she’d like, instead of having to go along with her employer’s plan (which – it should be made clear – she would still have the option of taking).

It might be too much to hope, but progressives in Congress should take another look at Wyden’s idea. Who knew expanding choice could be such a tough sell?

GOP Obstructionism Threatens the Courts

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A recurring theme in the first year of the Obama administration has been the refusal of the Republican Party to work in good faith with President Obama and the Democratic Congress. A new article by Doug Kendall in Slate points out another area in which Republican obstructionism has wreaked havoc on not just Democratic plans but political norms as well:

The emerging Republican strategy is to hold these uncontroversial nominees hostage as pawns in the larger war over President Obama’s agenda and the direction of the federal judiciary. The Senate operates according to a set of arcane rules that allows a minority party to bring the institution to a halt if it chooses to do so. Most bills and nominations pass through the Senate with no debate and only a voice vote on the Senate floor. But this requires every senator to play along. By stonewalling on every nominee so far, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is requiring his counterpart, Sen. Reid, to negotiate, or devote precious floor time, for every judicial confirmation.

This is unprecedented and dangerous. There are already 95 vacancies on the federal bench at a time when there is bipartisan agreement that we need more judgeships. The last thing we need is for existing seats in overworked courts to go unfilled.

Even more important, Republican obstruction of uncontroversial nominees undermines the one part of the judicial confirmation process that was still working, until now. Well-qualified nominees who enjoy bipartisan support should be able to count on a fair and relatively smooth Senate confirmation process. This is critical because while they’re waiting, the careers of these nominees go on hold. Given the demands of the bench, and the gap between judicial salaries and what these candidates could earn in private practice, the nation is already lucky that top candidates are willing to serve. If we throw in an unpredictable and lengthy confirmation process, the quality of the federal bench—and the dispensation of justice—will unquestionably suffer.

As Kendall points out, while politics have always played a role in the judicial confirmation process, the extent to which Republicans have played it is unprecedented. When Democrats controlled Congress during the Bush administration, a large number of Bush’s nominees zipped through the proceedings. Uncontroversial nominees were treated as exactly that – qualified judges who deserved to be confirmed without political gamesmanship.

Contrast that with what Republicans have done so far. Only three of President Obama’s 22 lower court nominees have been confirmed, a staggeringly low number especially considering there are already 95 vacancies waiting to be filled.

The GOP obstruction of Obama’s judicial nominees underscores just how little compunction the Republican Party has about playing politics — exactly the kind of stance that got them booted from power. For every Olympia Snowe who votes her conscience and is willing to cross partisan lines to do so, there are, well, 39 others who march in rejectionist lockstep. The strategy may win them the devotion of the hardcore base, but it’s hardly a recipe for long-term success.

Deeds Undone by Obama? No.

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s too early to write off the gubernatorial aspirations of Creigh Deeds in Virginia, but if he doesn’t overcome a consistent lead by Republican Bob McDonnell in the next twelve days, you can be sure many pundits will attribute his defeat to Barack Obama.

There’s only one problem with this hypothesis: despite his extraordinary unpopularity in other parts of the South, the President remains relatively popular in the Old Dominion. According to pollster.com, Obama´s average approval/disapproval ratio in recent Virginia polls is 51/46. Even Rasmussen has him in positive territory at 53/47, and the latest Washington Post poll had him at 53/46. This is precisely the same margin by which Obama carried the Commonwealth last November.

Nor does general disdain for the Democratic Party appear to be the culprit. The current governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, is chairman of the Democratic National Committee. His average approval ratio at pollster.com currently stands at 53/39.

It’s always tempting to interpret state electoral contests as bellwethers for national political trends, particular in odd years like this one. But it’s usually wrong.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Southern Outlier

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Anyone familiar with sentiment in the region is aware that Barack Obama isn’t very popular among white voters in the Deep South. The Obama-Biden ticket did worse than Kerry-Edwards ’04 among white voters in much of that area, despite the Democratic breakthroughs in nearby North Carolina and Virginia.

But the scope of the continuing unpopularity of Obama and Democrats in the South is graphically demonstrated in recent analysis from DKos-R2K. Obama´s overall national favorable/unfavorable ratio in its October poll was 55/37. In the South, it was 27/68. The Republican Party’s rating nationally was 21/67. In the South, it was 48/37. The Democratic Party’s national rating was 41/51. In the South, it was 21/72. And on the congressional “generic ballot,” Democrats led nationally 35/29; GOPers led in the South 47/21.

These are regional averages which almost certainly overstate Democrats´ problems in Florida, NC, and Virginia, but may also understate the problem in the Deep South.

Such numbers will undoubtedly reinforce already strong tendencies by non-southern Democrats to “write off” the region as intractably reactionary if not incurably racist. That would be a major mistake. Most of the congressional districts held by southern Democrats are far friendlier to Obama than the regional averages indicate, and we need to hold as many of them as possible (the same is true of many statewide offices, and in the state legislative contests that will determine control of redistricting). And as the 2008 results in FL, NC and VA showed, there are demographic trends in the region that give Democrats considerable future hope wherever sufficient concentrations of minority voters, upscale professionals, and academic/research centers co-exist.

What the current numbers probably reflect more than anything is the exceptional unhappiness of southerners with the economy, which has reversed decades of sunbelt growth. If high southern unemployment rates begin to turn around by 2010 or 2012, the South´s outlier status may moderate as well.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

In Praise of Dissenters

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Historian Matthew Dallek has a piece in today’s Politico extolling the virtues of dissenting from one’s party. Exhibit A: Sen. Olympia Snowe (ME), whose vote in favor of the Senate Finance Committee’s health bill has proven crucial to giving health reform a much-needed boost in the late innings.

Snowe has drawn fire from the right for her apostasy and from the left for her outsized role in the process (which, one suspects, would not be a problem had she been a strong supporter of the public option). But Dallek suggests that Snowe’s efforts, already crucial in the present context, could prove even more momentous in the long run:

Oftentimes, the consensus within either the Democratic or the Republican Party is a product of ideological blinders or groupthink — and the resulting policies are shortsighted and ultimately deeply flawed.

In recent decades, such voices of protest within a political party have occasionally proved to be far more insightful than anybody at the time cared to acknowledge or even contemplate.

Putting Snowe’s dissent in historical context, Dallek makes an interesting comparison with the creation of the DLC in the mid-1980s. He points out that while the DLC’s attempts to move the Democratic Party closer to the center angered traditional liberals at the time, it ultimately “made the party more competitive in presidential elections and erased the stigma of weakness from some of the party’s future standard-bearers.” The heterodoxy of leaders like then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and then-Sen. Al Gore (TN) still does not play well in some progressive circles to this day, but the fact is their refusal to march in lockstep with the party ended up revitalizing it.

It’s probably unlikely that Snowe’s departure from the party line on health care — not to mention Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (SC) on climate change — will be similarly transformative. But Dallek’s point is well taken: done in good conscience, thinking outside the party box can often lead to more prudent, sensible ideas — and look good in hindsight to boot.

CO Dems Urge Up-or-Down Vote on Public Option

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The prospects for health reform’s passage have certainly brightened over the last few weeks. Yesterday bought a new push in the direction of reform.

A trio of Colorado Democrats — Gov. Bill Ritter, Sen. Michael Bennett, and Sen. Mark Udall — released an open letter to U.S. senators urging them to reject a filibuster and give the public option an up-or-down vote in the Senate:

Even if you oppose a public option, we urge you not to hold it hostage with the threat of the filibuster. Stand up for the people, not the insurance industry, and give the public option the up-or-down vote it deserves.

The call for an up-or-down vote on the public option is something that has been building for a while. (Our own Ed Kilgore made a similar argument in September.) The principle behind it is certainly sound: a senator can vote their conscience and against the public option, as long as they allow the plan to come up for a vote, period. By supporting this tactic, progressives could also avoid the difficulties that come with trying to pass reform through the budget reconciliation process.

Regardless of where one stands on the public option — PPI has always believed that reform was possible with or without one — the idea of letting it stand for an up-or-down vote is something everyone should agree on. Because of their reputation as pragmatic progressives (as opposed to some of the plan’s more ideological supporters), Ritter, Bennett, and Udall’s move certainly makes such a vote a likelier possibility.

The Right’s War Against Volunteerism

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Of all the hobbyhorses that the right has jumped on this year, perhaps one of the strangest is their crusade against volunteerism. Their latest salvo against community service comes against iParticipate, a week-long initiative by the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a Hollywood charitable group, to promote volunteerism in storylines and public service announcements in over 100 TV programs. Seems fairly innocuous, right? Not to some conservatives:

But while the project has found widespread support in Hollywood, the fact that it dovetails with President Barack Obama’s call for national service has fueled suspicion in some conservative circles that iParticipate is an effort to prop up left-wing causes.

Twitter users have posted messages complaining that the initiative is an abuse of the public airwaves. Writers on the blog Big Hollywood, part of the conservative news portal Breitbart.com, noted that iparticipate.org’s database of volunteer opportunities includes postings from Planned Parenthood and groups focused on ending global warming. (The database — powered by a nonprofit Web platform called All for Good — also includes listings for pro-life organizations and the conservative group Tea Party Nation.)

On his show last night, Glenn Beck joined in the fun:

[I]s it just a coincidence that all of this falls into line with President Obama’s Corporation for National and Community Service and call for more service and volunteerism?…It’s almost like we’re living in Mao’s China right now.

The assault on iParticipate continues the year-long war conservatives have been waging against community service. Earlier in the year, they trained their fire on that pernicious program, AmeriCorps, with the Examiner claiming that President Obama’s expansion of it had a “strong odor of creepy authoritarianism.” American Conservative magazine warned, “This is part of a long series of Democratic Party efforts to create pretexts to commandeer more of people’s lives.” Beck, as he is wont to do, went further, taking Obama’s call for a “civilian national security force” out of context and asserting that Obama’s bolstering of AmeriCorps “is what Hitler did with the SS.”

This smearing of volunteerism is, of course, deranged. One would think that everyone could agree that Americans devoting time and effort to community and national service was an unmitigated good that transcended ideology. (Indeed, just this weekend, Obama appeared with former President George H.W. Bush at Texas A&M in a joint celebration of volunteerism.) But the blind hatred of Obama — and his community organizing past, which Sarah Palin sneered at during the Republican convention — has led some on today’s right to oppose the seemingly uncontroversial. One gets the feeling that had Obama been an oncologist instead, these same folks would now be waging the War on the War on Cancer. Unfortunately these days, such inanities are simply the new normal for American conservatism.

Doubts About the Army’s Recruitment Numbers

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Is the Army using a shell game to give a false impression of its recruiting success?

That’s a dangerous accusation, but a critical issue. In light of President Obama’s promise on the campaign trail to increase the end-strength of the military by 92,000 troops (65,000 for the Army alone), the Army’s numbers should accurately reflect how they’re doing.

Last week, the Pentagon issued a press release stating the Army had not only met but actually exceeded its recruiting goals for FY2009. Army Maj. Gen. Donald Campbell thumped his chest in the Washington Post soon thereafter, crediting the Army’s number of recruiters on the ground as a critical component of its success.

Unfortunately, the Army is using some creative accounting to bring about that success. To meet its goals, the Army simply lowered them — by ten thousand fewer new recruits in 2009 (vs. 2008) and ten thousand fewer re-enlistments. Or, as Fred Kaplan notes in Slate:

[T]he Army this year lowered not only the recruitment goal but the retention goal too, from 65,000 in 2008 to 55,000 in 2009. And it actually held on to fewer soldiers than it did in either of the last two years (68,000 in 2009, compared with 72,000 in 2008 and 69,000 in 2007).

So here is the situation. The secretary of defense ordered, and Congress authorized, an expansion in the size of the Army. But the Army reduced the recruitment goal — and reduced the retention goal. The size of the Army is in fact shrinking. It may look as if it’s growing — the Pentagon report gives the impression it’s growing — but it’s growing only in comparison with the officially set goals.

For Army “recruitniks” (a term usually applied to my friends’ insatiable desire to follow Charlie Weis’ efforts to cajole 18-year-old kids to play college football at Notre Dame), the situation comes as little surprise. In an excellent exposé in September, the National Journal made two key points about the Army’s recruits:

Never before has the Army had so many soldiers with so much experience; never before have so many soldiers been so exhausted.

The article concludes:

Today’s Army may be equal to the U.S. population in its demographic representation, but it is also separate.

And it is getting more so all the time. That reduces the chance that declining public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cause Army morale to collapse, as it did in Vietnam. Still, it raises a different danger. “I don’t think they’re going to get burned out,” said retired Col. Patrick Lang, a Vietnam veteran. “But they’re going to get harder and harder, and more detached from the values of civilian society.”

Unless the military puts out an honest assessment of where its recruiting is, none of these problems will be fixed any time soon.

Why Baucus May Have Played It Right

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From Roll Call today comes the latest episode in the tired series known as The Party of “No”:

Senate Republicans, acknowledging they lack the votes to block a health care reform bill outright, have implemented a comprehensive political strategy to delay, define and derail.

With Democratic leaders and White House officials holed up in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) office negotiating a final bill, Republicans are demanding a deceleration of the process and moving to define whatever plan that emerges as a combination of Medicare cuts, tax increases, higher insurance premiums and rising overall costs.

Such legislative nihilism from the GOP isn’t new. What’s striking, however, is how little sting their charges have. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY.) complains that Democrats are trying to rush the bill through without GOP feedback, it rings hollow.

Perhaps the credit for that should go to Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT). Many progressives chafed at Baucus’s insistence on a plodding, methodical process that made a good-faith effort to include moderate and conservative input. The finance committee’s deliberations may have seemed painstakingly slow, but it did yield a Republican supporter — Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — and a bill that, whatever one thought of it, could not be labeled a rushed and partisan product. In other words, Baucus’s process has, to some extent, inoculated the reform effort from Republican charges that the process hasn’t been deliberative or bipartisan enough.

We’ve seen this before, of course. In the negotiations over the stimulus bill, President Obama came under fire for bending over backwards to reach out to Republicans, as critics pointed out that few, if any, would jump aboard. Obama probably knew this, but also knew that the process, and public perceptions of it, matter. In the end, the administration got the stimulus bill it wanted with some Republican support. Moreover, Obama did it while burnishing his credentials as a pragmatic problem-solver and leaving Republicans looking like unreasonable obstructionists. The health reform debate seems like it’s following the same contours. In retrospect, Baucus may have played this right all along.

Blocking Out the Nobel Noise

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According to Gallup’s daily tracking poll, President Obama’s job approval rating has seen a nice little bounce in the wake of the Nobel Peace Prize announcement last Friday. From a term-low 50% approval rating a week ago, Obama’s rating now sits at 56%. That uptick certainly seems to defy the conventional wisdom among the chattering classes about Obama’s victory. The responses from the commentariat ran from frothing-at-the-mouth outrage from the usual conservative suspects to slightly abashed cheers from the president’s supporters. But hardly anyone saw the award as an unalloyed good.

But as we have learned repeatedly over the years, what passes for beltway CW hardly applies to the rest of the country. When you extricate yourself from the myopic maelstrom that is Washington punditry, you realize that most Americans actually have common-sense views that aren’t infected by who-up-who’s-down overanalysis. For many Americans, a sitting president winning the Nobel Peace Prize is, in fact, an unapologetically good thing. Obama, who has displayed an impressive ability to disregard the noise of cable and commentary, again showed sound instincts, accepting the award with humility and as a call to action, rather than turning down the prize, as some on both right and left urged. (As if this no-nonsense president would even consider making such a melodramatic gesture.)

Breaking down the Gallup numbers further, it appears that the bump has come strictly from Independents (up nine points) and Republicans (up eight). (Democratic numbers did not change.) This might suggest, as Gallup warns, that the bounce could be fleeting. But it also tells us that even with the right-wing explosion about the award, those most likely to be swayed had their own ideas. It affirms what the Obama campaign bet on during the campaign: When it comes to public opinion, Americans are pretty good about blocking out the media narrative du jour.

Why Obama’s Nobel Win Is a Good Thing

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s decision to bestow this year’s award on President Obama is both an endorsement and a challenge.

The prize is an endorsement of Obama’s idea of what America should be. We may be the world’s strongest power, but America should have the strength to listen and lead, not order and ignore. Obama’s America listens as much as it speaks, it projects specific and achievable long-term goals for world peace, and it isn’t afraid to tell friends and enemies alike that peace is achievable but only by making unpopular choices. More than empty words, Obama’s engagement is buttressed by a hard-nosed realism that is interested in acting as much as talking.

Would President Obama have won if he wasn’t immediately preceded by George W. Bush? Likely not — the differences in their ideologies, temperament, and interpretation of American power would probably not have been enough if the contrast hadn’t been sharply juxtaposed by historical proximity. But then again, would an African-American Democrat with little governing experience have been elected president without that contrast?

The prize is also a challenge, both to Obama and to the international community. Obama was inaugurated only two weeks before nominations for the prize were closed, suggesting that it was Obama’s idealistic hope on the campaign trail that won him consideration at the outset. His first months in office have inspired billions, but the next three years pose the challenge of turning hope into results.

His international partners have likewise been challenged. With Obama buoyed by the prestige of the prize, the burden to work for peace has shifted to them. It would normally be difficult to say no to the world’s most popular leader. How tougher would it be now that he’s won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Are the States Ready To Undertake Health Care Reform?

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As the U.S. Senate prepares for floor action on health care reform, there’s a sudden profusion of schemes that seek a compromise on the key “public option” question by giving states a lot of leeway. Tom Carper is floating a state “opt-in” approach. Others are talking about a state “opt-out” system. The Finance Committee has already adopted Maria Cantwell’s proposal to let states use federal subsidy funds to cover a majority of the uninsured as they see fit. And the original Baucus markup vehicle included Ron Wyden’s proposal to let states do all sorts of “experimentation” with federal funds.

The political value of these approaches is pretty obvious: by giving states flexibility on the key questions surrounding the public option debate, health reform proponents hope to give shaky Democrats and maybe a Republican or two an avenue to get out of the way of health reform while accomodating home-state pressure from health insurers and/or providers.

This makes abundant sense in Washington. But the question must be asked: are the states ready to get into the driver’s seat on the basic design of health care systems, public and private, within their borders?

I raise the question not because of any particular doubts about the competence of states on health care policy. But it’s important to understand that these state-based approaches to national health reform will transfer much of the yelling and screaming and lobbying we’ve seen, along with the complex issues that have to be resolved, right into the center of state politics, just in time for the 2010 elections.

Most of the fears about health reform that state officials have expressedup until now have, understandably enough, focused on the fiscal impact of Medicaid mandates. But governors and legislators, not to mention candidates for state offices, may soon be grappling with the entire range of controversial health care issues. They better get ready, and their representatives in Washington better start talking to them.

This item is cross-posted at The New Republic.