Health care reform would not have happened without the political skill and tenacity of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or without the last minute round of arm twisting by President Barack Obama. But equally important was the energetic public campaign that Obama and liberal and left-wing organizations waged on behalf of it. This campaign altered the chemistry of the debate within Congress and among Democrats.

Via Ron Brownstein:

Maureen Dowd spent a week in Saudi Arabia, presumably without having to wear the hijab or be smacked on her tush by themutaween to get her to pray. But now that she’s been to Riyadh, she is also an expert, an expert not so much on the huge peninsula but on Israel. Great place to learn!

Barack Obama is gunning for a confrontation with the Supreme Court, and Chief Justice John Roberts has signaled that he welcomes the fight. Last week, the chief justice described the president’s State of the Union condemnation of the Citizens United decision as “very troubling” and complained that the speech had “degenerated to a political pep rally.” Roberts was making an argument about etiquette--dissent was fine, he said, but Obama had somehow transgressed the boundaries of civilized discourse by delivering his attack to a captive audience.

I have argued that rising unemployment inevitably imperils the political prospects of a president and his party. So I’m not surprised that President Barack Obama’s approval ratings have steadily fallen over the last year, or that Democrats have fared poorly in recent elections. And it’s fair to say that if unemployment continues to rise, or stays at the same elevated level, the Democrats will have trouble in the midterm elections this November.

The most effective Republican arguments about health care reform lately have been about procedure, not policy. Over and over again, Republicans have accused Democrats of making shady backroom deals, of twisting the legislative process, and of trying to foist a secret plan on the country. From the looks of things, the attacks are working.

Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court
By Jeff Shesol
(W.W. Norton, 656 pp., $27.95)

In his forthcoming State of the Union address, President Obama has an opportunity to reset his administration and regain the initiative. What follows is the domestic policy portion of a speech he could give if he decides to do that. The alternative is some version of steady-as-you-go. This would reflect a judgment on his part that he’s doing just fine, or at least well enough—the B+ he awarded himself a few weeks ago.

Barack Obama has been compared to almost every American President of the last hundred years--favorably to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan; and unfavorably to Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. I want to put another name in the hat: Herbert Hoover.

When we endorsed Barack Obama, we held out hope that he might be a transformational president. That was clearly the way he viewed himself. He intended a profusion of reform legislation that would remake the U.S. economy. And that ambitious domestic program was to be replicated on the global stage. Just as he would create a new health care system, he would heal conflicts that had tormented humanity for decades, as well as build relations with longtime adversaries. He would succeed where other presidents, many other presidents, had failed.

Anyone who has followed closely the debate over national health insurance has probably noticed some peculiar inconsistencies in Americans’ attitudes toward the legislation. A Pew Poll released on October 8 found “steady support” for specific elements of the health care plan, including the public alternative to private insurance, the employer mandate, and the requirement that everyone have insurance. Nonetheless, popular support for the plan itself was declining, with 34 percent “generally [in] favor” and 47 percent “generally opposed.”

I had a friend visiting me this weekend who had fervently backed Barack Obama for President (against the “devil-woman” Hillary), but who now thinks Obama has betrayed his followers – most recently by agreeing to disastrous compromises in the health insurance bill. We argued the point on Sunday morning, while reading reports of the passage of the House bill.

Barack Obama looks like he will succeed where three Democratic presidents, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, so famously failed--by passing health care reform. That is an achievement for which posterity will likely reward him. But it may not help him and his party avoid setbacks at the polls.

A lot of people care about what happens to our health care system. But not a lot of people understand what’s actually being proposed--or even have time to figure it out. And even those who do follow the debate closely may not always know what’s important, what isn’t, and so on. (Even I get confused sometimes.)

Part of the problem is that judging reform actually requires asking several different questions. There’s the economic security issue: Will it expand insurance coverage substantially--and make sure the insurance people have is good insurance? There’s the cost question: Will it pay for itself--and will it reduce costs over the long run? And there’s the matter of quality: Will it actually make medical care better?

To help people sort this out, we’ve decided to develop a relatively straightforward scoring system. We’ve gone to some of our favorite experts and asked them to judge various reform plans on these criteria. Then, using a specially weighted composite of those numbers--more on the weighting in a moment--we compile an overall score. The scores will go from one (bad) to ten (good). And we’re calling it the Truman scale.

The name is a tribute to the president who first tried seriously to pass national health care reform: Harry Truman. Theodore Roosevelt talked about health care reform and Franklin Roosevelt thought about it, but Truman was the first who made a serious effort. He failed, of course, as did every president who’s tried since. But we’ve gotten closer each time and, as things stand, chances seem good that President Obama might actually succeed.  If so, he--and all of us--will owe Truman a debt of gratitude.

Now, about that weighting. This is where I, your friendly neighborhood health care policy wonk, get to set the priorities.  The security score will count three times, the cost question twice, and the quality once.  My thinking is that cost and quality are pretty closely related and that, together, they should count as much as security.

As for the experts, their names appear at the bottom of the score sheet. I promised to keep their individual scores confidential, although they’ve given permission to quote specific comments.

In 1949, a year after the state of Israel was created, its Chief Rabbi visited President Harry Truman in Washington. Isaac Halevi Herzog told Truman that his role in helping the Jewish state achieve its independence was not just a matter of politics and diplomacy; it was a divine mission. "When the President was still in his mother’s womb," Herzog said, "the Lord had bestowed upon him the mission of helping his Chosen People at a time of despair and aiding in the fulfillment of His promise of Return to the Holy Land." Truman was a 20th-century version of King Cyrus of Persia, who had permitted the Israelites to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem in the 6th century B.C.E.: "he had been given the task once fulfilled by the mighty king of Persia, and that he too, like Cyrus, would occupy a place of honor in the annals of the Jewish people."

With the Obama Administration letting Green Jobs czar Van Jones resign, questions as to whether these people have any spine are becoming sadly legitimate. What, precisely, would have been wrong with letting Glenn Beck and the others keep screaming their heads off about Jones’ purported radical intentions? Why not do a Glinda and dismiss this nonsense with a breezy “You have no power here”?

After all, we are faced here not with serious charges. There are no modern-day Whittaker Chambers in this crowd. The Republican smears against Obama of late are nonsense, pure and simple.

Jeffrey Herf is one of the pre-eminent intellectual historians of totalitarianism. He is a frequent contributor to The New Republic. See, for example, his last few contributions here, here, and here. You can also find a TNR review of one of his books, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys, here.

In the current issue of The American Interest, Herf makes a highly convincing argument that radical Islam today is in fact a totalitarian movement with totalitarian ideology and totalitarian methods. No, it is not Nazism or Communism. And, though its ideas are rather more primitive (my word, not his) than either of the reigning doctrines of the twentieth century and though its weapons are also more primitive, it partakes of contemporary methods--and, increasingly, technological methods--in the mobilization of masses of people.

Please read this essay and read it carefully...

How many times have you heard that the key to reviving the economy is fixing the banks? The thinking usually goes: If the banks are fixed--if bad loans are taken are taken off the books, and if regulations are put in place to prevent risky new loans--then they will resume lending to consumers who will buy cars and homes, and to businesses that will invest in plants and hire new workers.

Being Treasury secretary is usually not a job that calls for great political skills. But with a banking crisis crippling the economy and threatening to turn a recession into a depression, Tim Geithner has been plunged into the center of politics--as both the person responsible for what the administration should do, and as the main exponent of that policy. But he has faltered in crafting an effective policy and failed miserably in putting it forward.

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression By Amity Shlaes (HarperCollins, 464 pp., $26.95)

Herbert Hoover By William E. Leuchtenburg (Times Books, 208 pp., $22)

Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America By Adam Cohen (Penguin Press, 372 pp., $29.95)

At first blush, the findings of a study group called the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care might not seem particularly surprising. It's no longer news that millions of American families face financial ruin or physical catastrophe because they have no way to pay medical bills. Nor is it a great revelation that, as a committee staff member put it, "[v]ery few of these families are indigent in the accepted meaning of the word.

When I came to Washington from Baltimore in 1974, I had reason to be interested in a profound question: Do Republicans make better poker players than Democrats? My $15,000 salary at the Baltimore Sun remained unchanged, but the mortgage on my new house was four times the old one. So my Friday night game, which often lasted until 6 a.m., became a matter of survival.