Pollsters Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell have a Washington Post op-ed urging the Democrats to abandon health care reform out of their own self-interest:
A year ago, I wrote an article for TNR on the dysfunctionality of Congressional Democrats:
These days, liberals don’t know whether to feel betrayed by or merely disappointed with Barack Obama. They have gone from decrying his willingness to remove the public option from his health care plan to worrying that, in the wake of Democrat Martha Coakley’s defeat in Massachusetts, he won’t get any plan through Congress. On other subjects, too, from Afghanistan to Wall Street, Obama has thoroughly let down his party’s left flank.
Bill Clinton didn’t know he was in big trouble until the eve of the November 1994 election. Barack Obama knows now, barely a year into his presidency. While party loyalists might blame Martha Coakley’s defeat on her ignorance of Red Sox baseball, it was clearly a message to the president and his party. A less inept candidate might have beaten Scott Brown, but, if Obama’s program and presidency were more popular in Massachusetts, even Coakley could have won--and maybe by double digits.
If you’ve been a Democrat for more than two or three years, disappointment with your leaders is something that comes rather naturally. From the 1970s until well into the previous decade, the party produced presidents and presidential candidates like Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry. These men weren’t lovable losers. They were just losers. Even the lone winner among them--Bill Clinton--famously and infamously found ways to disappoint.
But then Barack Obama came along. And for the first time, at least in my memory, Democrats had a leader who consistently outsmarted not just his opponents but his supporters as well. Over and over again in the 2008 campaign, those of us rooting for him would panic over his strategy. Over and over again, Obama proved us wrong. He had an uncanny ability to block out the noise and confound Beltway perceptions, to ignore the ups and downs of the news cycle in order to pursue broader goals. Even for me, somebody who generally resisted the Obama kool-aid, it was something to behold.
I remember the sensation most vividly during the financial crisis of September--when John McCain suspended his campaign and suggested canceling a scheduled debate, in order to return to Washington. Suggesting that a president should be able to campaign and govern simultaneously, Obama rebuffed the proposal--a move for which, I was sure, nervous voters would punish him. Instead, the public rallied to Obama and rejected McCain. They saw a leader who was unflappable, who had his own sense of direction, and who could manage a crisis.
This cool demeanor became his trademark and, eventually, supporters took to emailing around a photoshop image every time political trouble appeared. If you're on a progressive mailing list, chances are you saw it a few dozen times--a picture of Obama giving a speech, with the caption “Everybody Chill the F*** Out. I’ve Got This.”
Bill Clinton didn’t know he was in big trouble until the very eve of the November 1994 election. Barack Obama knows now, barely a year into his presidency. While the party loyalists can blame Martha Coakley’s defeat on her ignorance of Red Sox baseball, it was clearly a message to the president and his party. Yes, a less inept candidate might have beaten Scott Brown, but if Obama and his program had been more popular in Massachusetts, even Coakley could have won--and by ten points or more.
Jacob Gershman writes:
Just a quick thought on the Wehner Fallacy. Surely, it's not just one or the other: unemployment or ideology. But wouldn't you agree that ideological or partisan criticism of a political leader gains more currency during rougher economic periods? It provides a narrative of failure, gives voters a clearer reason to blame the president, and pulls centrists towards the opposition. Would a centrist leader be less vulnerable when the economy tanks?
Maybe President Obama has not really heard that there is another war brewing in Sudan. But TIME Magazine has already published an article by Alex Perry asking, “Is Sudan Moving Back to the Brink of War?” And, judging by the desperation of the aid groups and of many serious political analysts, the answer is most certainly “yes.”
Six years ago yesterday, the Washington Redskins lured their three-time Super Bowl-winning coach, Joe Gibbs, out of retirement in an attempt to restore the team’s vanished glory. To commemorate the news, the local paper of record published--above the fold on page one--a large and dramatic photo of Gibbs.
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.
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.”
It is just about 30 years since the wall around Iran went up. And it is a few days away from fully 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down.
The Berliner Mauer had been up for more than a quarter century, and its surface facing east, grim gray, was a metaphor for life in the German Democratic Republic. On its western face graffiti evoked the freer spirit of the half-city whose heart had nonetheless been broken by the Soviet goose step that divided it. And the Cold War was won on the very day the authorities of the D.D.R. were simply coerced by the power of human will to let its subjects scramble over the deeply ugly barrier into a Berlin with life and life-blood.
There are three broad reasons that the Wall came down. The first is that the communist system itself was a Potemkin Village, and even the village facade spread from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics--always distrust political projects pompously named!--all the way through eastern Europe was not pretty. Neither was it efficient. It's human relations were, well, inhumane. No, they were cruel, although the Bolshoi Ballet danced serenely. My friend Dr. Jerry Groopman, the great chronicler of contemporary medicine, returned from a trip to Moscow a few years before the fall. And his report after visiting a few hospitals: "There is an ongoing epidemic of tuberculosis. The Soviet Union is a failure." This was not an oversimplification.
The second reason for the collapse of both the Warsaw Pact and the U.S.S.R. was the problem of nations and nationalities. The Pact put the Soviets as sovereign over great historic peoples. This simply could not last. There is just so much humiliation that Poles and Hungarians, Czechs and Rumanians could take. Moreover, the Soviet Union was also a union of coerced ethnic groups with pasts of which they were both conscious and proud. The regime began to aggress against these already shortly after the revolution, and these aggressive strategies soon included starvation, exile, population transfer and the importation of Russian nationals into the lands of others. Not many observers or, for that matter, scholars noticed--let alone, saw deeply--these issues abuilding. I was lucky. The greatest historian of communism, at least in the languages I read, Adam Ulam (now deceased), who was the supervisor of my doctoral dissertation at Harvard, saw these phenomena plenty clear and thus was always optimistic about the Soviet collapse. Look at some of his books and a few of his TNR pieces to get a sense of his depth and breadth. Also on the national question, see Hélène Carrère d'Encausse's masterful The End of the Soviet Empire: The Triumph of the Nations, a volume the publication of which in English by New Republic Books (in collaboration with Basic Books) I had much to do.
Matthew Continetti's editorial in last week's issue of the Weekly Standard--"The Inevitability Myth: Health care reform is not a fait accompli"--makes the case that, despite all evidence, health care reform may not be enacted after all. (Continetti does concede that "the chances of some sort of health bill passing, at some point, are by no means negligible." So he's telling us there's a chance.)
This sort of argument is actually the signature style of the Standard. A magazine like National Review specializes in making the case for conservative ideas. The Standard's contribution is to assert over and over that Republicans are succeeding, or at least doing better than you think they are. The idea is to buck up your side and encourage them to keep fighting, in order to ward off the self-defeating psychology of losing.
It's unclear to me why the subscribers of that magazine pay money to be the subjects of a disinformation campaign. To be sure, like any stopped clock, sometimes the Standard gets it right. But there's a distinctly Pravda-esque feel to the political coverage that makes back reading an enjoyable experience. With help from Noah Kristula-Green, I pulled together some examples:
The saga of Rush Limbaugh and his failed attempt to acquire a piece of the St. Louis Rams may be the quintessential postmodern American racial incident. When word first leaked of Limbaugh's potential ownership, a couple of sportswriters, joined by a handful of cable news talking heads, repeated what turned out to be totally unsubstantiated quotes by Limbaugh praising slavery and James Earl Ray. (Documented outrageous Limbaugh-isms were available but generally ignored.)
No, not Dwight Eisenhower (and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles), who thought of his Arabs as the Egyptians. Frankly, in 1956, nobody thought of Palestinians, including especially the Palestinians.
And, no, not even Jimmy Carter, who, while now especially entranced with the Palestinians, including Hamas, was beginning his macabre infatuation with Hafez Assad.
Then there was George Herbert Walker Bush and his sidekick James Baker, who didn't much like the Jews but wanted especially to please the Saudis. The U.S. provided arms to Saddam Hussein, who made the mistake of using them against Kuwait, which, of course, frightened "the kingdom." Hence the first Gulf war. A little simplified? Not much. Oh, yes, Baker gave Tom Friedman the White House telephone number and told him to give it to Yitzhak Shamir, who spoke only to himself. He's still alive and still mute. He once wagged his stubby little finger at me in Blair House.
That's more or less the presidential narrative except for Bill Clinton, who loved the Israelis so much that they loved him back and gave him what he wanted, even color-coding the Old City between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Arafat told him and them to go shove it. Apparently, Bill still loves Israel. (Apparently, he still speaks for the Jews as long as the price is right.) But it's hard to imagine that Hillary loves anyone. Anyway, she's been busy in Ireland (where "the troubles" are beginning again) and in Africa (where the troubles never end) and in China (to whose leaders she said nothing about human rights) and in Russia, where she had a low-level host and visited a low-level state in the Federation and unveiled a statue to Walt Whitman but didn't know he was gay and got into trouble with gay activists who were being beaten up by the present-day version of the Cheka.
And so, back to President Obama, who's been reciting the Palestinian narrative so much that he's got it memorized by heart. Which gives rise to the suspicion that it really comes from his heart. This is difficult for me since I gave a lot of energy (and the maximum amount of money allowed) to his campaign.
The health care debate has exposed the ideological tension in Barack Obama’s political coalition between moderates and liberals. But it has also offered hints of how another, less obvious divide built into the Democratic majority could wreak havoc on the administration during the years to come.
Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery
By Steve Nicholls
(University of Chicago Press, 524 pp., $30)
American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau
Edited by Bill McKibben
(Library of America, 1,047 pp., $40)
Defending The Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, And The Legacy Of Madison Grant
By Jonathan Peter Spiro
(University of Vermont Press, 462 pp., $39.95)
A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir
By Donald Worster
(Oxford University Press, 535 pp., $34.99)
A Reenchanted World: The Quest for A New Kinship With Nature
By James William Gibson
(Metropolitan Books, 306 pp., $27)
Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet
By Edward Humes
(Ecco Books, 367 pp., $25.99)
I.
In contemporary public discourse, concern for "the environment" is a mile wide and an inch deep. Even free-market fundamentalists strain to display their ecological credentials, while corporations that sell fossil fuels genuflect at the altar of sustainability. Everyone has discovered how nice it is to be green. Will popular sentiment translate into public policy? There is reason to be skeptical.
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.
It's been a big week for anti-anti-racism. Virtually the entire conservative world has waxed indignant about Jimmy Carter's suggestion that racism is responsible for the unusual virulence of anti-Obama sentiment.
Listening to it all, you'd think the so-called "race card" was a much bigger problem in American society than racism itself, and that does seem to be what a lot of conservatives think. But it's getting to the point where the argument seems to be that if anti-Obama protesters have any non-racial motives for their behavior, then mentioning race as any sort of factor (hard to avoid given the revival of screaming about "welfare" and the preoccupation with the marginal organzing group ACORN) is a terrible insult.
Charles Krauthammer today accuses President Obama of misleading the public on health care reform:
Obama said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of Obamacare by eliminating "hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud" from Medicare.
Now that race has "entered the debate" about opposition to President Obama--Rush Limbaugh said yesterday that "In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering"--you are likely to see conservatives make some version of the following argument (turn on Fox for even five minutes and you are guaranteed to see it). Here is Victor Davis Hanson:
Well, it seems that Osama bin Laden likes English books. Of course, he can't read them in English. He reads them in Arab translation. And there are good reasons for there to be Arab translations of two of his very favorite books. The first is already marking the second anniversary of its publication. It is Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
OK, the Bertrand Russell psychodrama is also malicious but maybe not dangerously so. About six months ago, I came across a web posting announcing the formation of a Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Palestine. Yes, it was one of those false kangaroo courts in which, from the Stalin era on, convenes not to evaluate evidence but to condemn. In loads of cases the verdicts brought quick impositions of the death sentence. One such process is now unfolding in Tehran, and its backers are Muslim millenarians and western leftists who are prone to support every revolution even if it is decidedly and objectively reactionary, nay, fascistic. This hangmen's jurisprudence will soon end its proceedings and it will end in blood. The Russell production will be a show trial.
The convener of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal, Ken Coates, is the chairman of the Betrand Russell Peace Foundation who has been in this unproductive line of work at least as early as 1975 when he and Noam Chomsky wrote their sympathizers (through the New York Review of Books, of course) to ask for help in raising 20,000 pounds, not a big sum for an organization with so many flashy supporters. Now, fast forward to 2009, and the occupiers of the Russell name are still out on the street pandering for support. Dorothy Day's sweet old Catholic Worker does better.
Over the past 40 years, Edward Moore Kennedy was the grand statesman of the Democratic liberalism that emerged out of the 1960s. He was a loyalist to his principles even when those principles fell completely out of fashion. He overcame personal flaws and searing travails to become a masterful legislator, congressional infighter, and builder of unlikely coalitions. Ironically, he achieved all of this only after he had surmounted the political entitlement that made his career possible in the first place.
