Politics of Destruction

Tom Friedman actually thinks right wing vitriol against Obama is preparing the ground for another presidential assassination. He has to go to Israel (a right-wing fanatic killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995) for his example, however, since neither of the Kennedy brothers' assassins were right-wing, and no right-winger shot at Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan.

Friedman though is correct about the intemperate hounding of every president since Bush 41—Clinton, Bush 43, and now Obama. Friedman blames the excess of money in politics; the gerrymandering of political districts, making them permanently Republican or Democratic and erasing the political middle; a 24/7 cable news cycle that means daily politics is about tactics, not strategy; a blogosphere that coarsens our debates to a whole new level, empowering anonymous slanderers and liars, and; most of all, a permanent presidential campaign giving us “all partisanship, all the time.”

Not surprisingly, New York Timesman Friedman completely ignores the media’s central role in going after Bush 43, as well as the degree to which media partisanship in favor of Clinton during the impeachment process and now with Obama triggers right-wing hostility. Conservatives were happier when the national media made some effort to be even-handed, even if after Watergate, that meant going after both parties. Since Clinton’s impeachment, the media's enemies are “all Republicans, all the time.”

Clinton and the media viewed the GOP’s use of the Monica Lewinsky scandal as an extra-constitutional, illegitimate effort to oust Clinton before his term was up. Clinton needed the united support of his party and the media’s strong backing to hang on. He moved his policy program leftward to keep every Democratic vote, and with the media’s cooperation, demonized Newt Gingrich and Kenneth Starr to provide Democrats the enemy to unite against. In 1996, Clinton worked with Gingrich and Republicans. From 1998 onward with the media’s help, Washington turned deeply partisan.

Bush 43 promised a different atmosphere, but since Gore received more popular votes that Bush in 2000, it was easy for Democrats and the media to view Bush as illegitimate. Then came Iraq, a war that cast aside the “lesson of Vietnam” so important in the lives of leading Democrats and media figures. The unchecked hostility Bush faced from Democrats and the media drove him into the arms of his extremists, the same way impeachment had pushed Clinton and the Democratic left together. Bush attempted, ever less successfully, to govern with a small Republican majority, tightly united against those trying to undermine his foreign policy.

Obama really had a chance for a fresh start. He could have been the bi-partisan, post-partisan president we need. But his “Chicago mafia” believe they are right, Republicans are wrong, they have the power, and if they don’t use their power to change America, they are fools. So Obama governs Bush’s way, working to hold his Democrats together, which means keeping his left wing happy, and uniting Democrats against media-demonized (hate filled) Republicans.

As Friedman says, “Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word ‘we’ with a straight face. There is no more ‘we’ in American politics.” How unfortunate.

Wooing the World

Jennifer Rubin, in Commentary, reacts to Obama’s UN address:

Obama plainly embodies [the] mindset of liberal elites. America is flawed. America has no distinct message or values, and its interests are entitled to no more weight than Belgium’s or Cuba’s. It’s wrongheaded to assert our national interests. We should be seeking consensus and righting the great wrongs that America has done to other nations—both its stinginess in redistributing wealth and its failure to cater to other nations’ geopolitical and psychological concerns. Russia needs reassuring. The Arabs need validation. And it’s the president’s job to lower America’s profile so as to not incur the wrath of hostile powers.

Rubin, to me, provides a fair characterization of Obama’s views, but omits some perspective. Obama sees himself astride the divide between America and the rest of the world, 80% “of color.” He’s the U.S. president. He won the election. He doesn’t have to win Americans over. Furthermore, we are on top. It’s the others—Russians, Arabs, Iranians, Third Worlders—who need wooing. Fellow Americans, just let Obama do his wooing job. He knows what he’s up to.

Rubin misses the method to Obama’s madness. Obama will win friends alienated by Bush’s intervention in Iraq. But it is madness to think that thugs like Russia’s Putin, Iran’s Ahmadinejad, or the leaders of Hamas are going to be won over by Obama sweet talk. If anything, they are more responsive to signs that Obama has a spine of steel. You can speak softly if you are willing to use a big stick. Is Obama willing (see Afghanistan)?

Also, as Rubin says, Obama maybe should pay more attention to the millions of Americans alienated by the president’s pandering to foreign prejudices about our country. Obama did win 53% of the popular vote. But many of those who voted for Obama, especially independents, went for someone who promised economic change. They may not like seeing America bowing to foreign despots [picture; click to enlarge].

Obama: the Policy President

David Broder, the conventionally liberal senior political commentator at the Washington Post, has a column offering real insight into how the Obama administration may work. Broder credits his conclusions to an article by William Schambra [picture], director of the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. According to Schambra, the "sheer ambition" of Obama's legislative agenda and his centralizing authority under a strong White House staff replete with "czars" are evidence "Obama is emphatically a 'policy approach' president.”

For Obama, governing means formulating comprehensive policies that give rational form to large social systems. Long-term, systemic problems such as health care, education, and the environment cannot be solved in small pieces. They must be swallowed whole.

Schambra says this approach began with late 19th-early 20th century progressives who were battling classic interest-group forces. Progressives believed they could apply the new social sciences wisdom to the art of government, and use facts to overcome the ideologies of narrow constituencies. There’s one true path, and the progressives would find it for us.

Obama—a highly intelligent elite university product—isn’t the first president to subscribe to this approach. Jimmy Carter, and especially Bill Clinton, attempted to govern this way. But Obama has made it even more explicit, regularly proclaiming his determination to rely on rational analysis, rather than narrow decisions.

"In one policy area after another," Schambra writes, "from transportation to science, urban policy to auto policy, Obama's formulation is virtually identical: Selfishness or ideological rigidity has led us to look at the problem in isolated pieces. [We must instead] take the long systemic view; and when we finally formulate a uniform national policy supported by empirical and objective data rather than shallow, insular opinion, we will arrive at solutions that are not only more effective but less costly as well."

Broder shows how Obama’s policy approach on energy and health care ran head-on into the politically motivated agendas of his congressional allies, causing Broder to conclude, “Democracy and representative government are a lot messier than the progressives and . . . Obama, want to admit. No wonder they are . . . frustrated.”

To me, it’s a joy to have Broder realize how the Obama group’s supposed monopoly of good planning, of facts, of the truth, might fall before the popular will, as expressed through their democratic representatives.

Government of the people.

Democratic Socialism versus Growth

Germany now has a center-right government. The pro-business Free Democratic Party headed by Guido Westerwelle gained real power; it won big in yesterday’s election and is Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition partner-to-be [click to enlarge Westerwelle-Merkel photo and tell us, “Why is this woman laughing?”].

The Socialists (SPD) drop to a historic low after leading or being in Germany’s ruling government for the past 11 years. Last year, Socialists lost in Italy, and two years ago, France’s Sarkozy defeated lionized Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal for president, thereby prolonging conservative rule over that country. Under David Cameron, Britain is expected to go Conservative next year, which will mean Socialists out of power in every major European social democracy. What’s happened?

It’s not as if we’ve reached, as Malte Lehming, an editor at Berlin’s Tagespiegel, suggests, “the end of socialism in Europe.” Western Europe is heavily invested in the welfare state—state supported industries, state housing, heavily subsidized public transit, nationalized health, generous unemployment benefits, nanny state restrictions—and none of Europe’s new governments will take these government blessings away. But Europe’s voters do long for economies that grow faster, and generate jobs. A very large public sector means high taxes, high unemployment, and low growth. Europe wants better.

The G-8 is dead. Long live the G-20.

We can no longer meet the challenges of the 21st century economy with 20th century approaches.

--Barack Obama



With those words, Obama helped bury the G-8 group of developed nations, which did increasingly look like a relic from an earlier era. (This transformation seemed underway when the G-20 had its last summit). The G-8 was seven (largely) white nations, plus Japan. The G-20 includes China, India, Brazil, and eight other non-European nations.

The G-20, not perfect, nevertheless provides a potential forum for real action on major foreign policy problems, at least until we get the UN Security Council right.

Monopoly on Wisdom

We have a country ruled by our wisest. For many, that’s a country right side up. In the 5th century B.C., Athens was a democracy, a polity offensive to the city’s oligarchy, including the philosopher Plato [see bust]. Plato instead favored minority rule, but not by the wealthy, rather by an educated elite that foreswore the pursuit of money. Much like the ideals of the current anti-business, pro-government, Democratic Party elite.

When people believe one class is more fit to rule than others, in my opinion they move us away from democracy and toward meritocracy, from democratic Athens to Plato’s republic. And today, the educated and articulate Obama reigns, the modern version of Plato’s philosopher king.

Janet Daley, writing in the Telegraph (U.K.), gets at why Obama has such a hold over our national elite:

Exceptionally articulate politicians begin with a great electoral advantage because the opinion-forming class is in love with words: to adapt WH Auden, it

worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives.

As Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn writes,

liberal[s assume] they have a monopoly on brain power. . . anyone who dissents, almost by definition, has to be stupid . . . Obama inadvertently encourages [this view] when he [tells] his town halls. . . he's received a letter from a woman upset with his plans for health care. "She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want you meddling in the private market place. And keep your hands off my Medicare.'" Get it? The applause tells us the audience does: How dumb can this woman be?

Fouad Ajami, the committed Johns Hopkins supporter of Middle East democracy, has seen in the health care debate the same elite arrogance that drew McGurn’s attention:

So we are to have a French health-care system without a French tradition of political protest. It is odd that American liberalism, in a veritable state of insurrection during the Bush presidency, now seeks political quiescence. . .A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate. President Barack Obama himself, the community organizer par excellence, is full of lament that the "loudest voices" are running away with the national debate. Liberalism in righteous opposition, liberalism in power: The rules have changed.

Going back over three decades, we have, from liberal Stanford economist Victor Fuchs’ 1976 article "From Bismarck to Woodcock: The 'Irrational' Pursuit of National Health Insurance," an indication of why health care may be so central to those who believe in government control of our country’s life:

one of the most effective ways of increasing allegiance to the state is through national health insurance. We live at a time when many of the traditional symbols and institutions that held a nation together have been weakened and fallen into disrepute. A more sophisticated public requires more sophisticated symbols, and national health insurance may fit that role particularly well.

The health industry isn’t the whole economy, but it’s one-sixth, an important beginning.

Obama’s UN Speech

I have some comments, in italics, on President Obama’s UN speech yesterday. My comments immediately follow Obama’s direct quotes.

I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world. These expectations are not about me. . .

But in truth, he believes it’s all about him.

I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. . .America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. . .

After the Bush darkness, the Obama light.

more than at any point in human history - the interests of nations and peoples are shared.

“We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

I have carried this message from London to Ankara; from Port of Spain to Moscow; from Accra to Cairo. . . Speeches alone will not solve our problems - . . .

But my speeches really do help solve problems.

The people of the world want change. They will not long tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history.

The people move governments, and I move people.

No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional division between nations of the south and north makes no sense in an interconnected world. Nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War.

We are now beyond alliances, beyond the “balance of power” politics that generates alliances, and have reached toward “one world.”

Together, we must build new coalitions that bridge old divides - coalitions of different faiths and creeds; of north and south, east and west; black, white, and brown.

(Paraphrasing Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech,) we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro civil rights song, “Black and white together! Black and white together!”

Today, I put forward four pillars that are fundamental to the future that we want for our children: non-proliferation and disarmament; the promotion of peace and security; the preservation of our planet; and a global economy that advances opportunity for all people.

Yet again, Obama’s “pillars”.

determined to act boldly and collectively on behalf of justice . . .

we will support honest police and independent judges. . .

transformative change can be forged by those who choose the side of justice.

Though “justice” wasn’t one of his “four pillars,” it remains a key concern of former law professor Obama, who also believes terrorism is a police problem good courts could handle.

democracy and human rights are essential to achieving each of the goals that I have discussed today. Because governments of the people and by the people are more likely to act in the broader interests of their own people, rather than the narrow interest of those in power

no individual should be forced to accept the tyranny of their own government.

A ringing endorsement of democracy, except that. . .

Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside.

One of the “Panchsheel”, the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” is “non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.” Given Obama’s post-alliance, one world views, it seems as if Obama wants to bring back and put in place the 1950s-1970s nonaligned movement foreign policy, essentially folding the First and Second World into the Third, or now dominant “One World”. The “Second World,” that of Communism, has disappeared, and Obama, as U.S. President, leads the old “First World.” So Obama may believe he can make “One World” happen.

we can be a generation that . . . finally gives meaning to the promise embedded in the name given to this institution: the United Nations.

We have ... re-engaged the United Nations. We have paid our bills. We have joined the Human Rights Council. . . And we address our priorities here, in this institution . . . through the Security Council meeting that I will chair tomorrow

imperfections are not a reason to walk away from this institution . . . The United Nations . . . can be indispensable in advancing the interests of the people we serve.

In his speech, Obama says, “I am not naïve.” But as we have said at length in this blog, the UN in its current format doesn’t work. The General Assembly is just a hall for speeches, and the Security Council doesn’t have the membership needed to take action. One hopes Obama is merely paying lip service to the idea of using the UN to achieve peace. The G-20 will work better.

You Saw It Here, First

August 30:

Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune, wrote:

amid talk of a second Great Depression, Obama was often compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt. But by the time FDR took office, the economy had been in free fall for more than three years, creating mass desperation.

July 11:

I wrote that while Bush was in danger of becoming Herbert Hoover to Obama’s FDR,

Here’s the big factual difference. . . The Great Depression clobbered Hoover in his 7th month in office (October 1929), and he lived with it for the next 41.

Obama Struggles with Afghanistan

the American left since the Vietnam years has not wanted to see America victorious in war. They think it makes us look chauvinistic and proud about our nation when we should be, as Obama often has been, apologetic for its sins.

--Michael Barone

I think the left is unambiguously anti-military. But most of all, the left doesn’t want Afghanistan to be Obama’s Vietnam, and bring him down the way Vietnam brought down the last great Democratic domestic policy reformer, Lyndon Johnson. The left wants out now, before things in Afghanistan get any worse.

Les Gelb’s piece in the Wall Street Journal tells us how serious the Afghanistan war issue has become within Obama’s administration. Gelb, the former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, is the ultimate foreign policy insider. What he writes is what people, probably especially Richard Holbrooke, the frustrated Secretary of State wannabe [picture, click to enlarge] in charge of Obama’s Afghanistan policy, are telling the President. Read Gelb with interest.

Here’s what Gelb (Holbrooke) says:

➢ I'm lost on . . . Obama's Afghanistan policy. . . eight months ago, Mr. Obama pledged to "defeat" al Qaeda in Afghanistan by transforming that country's political and economic infrastructure, training Afghan forces and adding 21,000 U.S. forces for starters. He proclaimed Afghanistan's strategic centrality to prevent Muslim extremism from taking over Pakistan. . .And a mere three weeks ago, he punctuated his commitments by proclaiming that Afghanistan is a "war of necessity," not one of choice.

➢ [Yet now] Obama [says,] "I'm going to take a very deliberate process . . . one of the things that I'm absolutely clear about is you have to get the strategy right and then make a determination about resources." . . Are we now to understand that he made all those previous declarations and decisions without a strategy he was committed to?

➢ Obama can't simply walk away from the war. A lot of Democrats don't seem to fathom this. At a minimum, the president has got to give Afghan allies a fighting chance to hold their own and prepare the ground to blunt the Taliban and al Qaeda. That will take time.

➢ The U.S. now faces many very serious troubles abroad. These were all born before the Obama presidency. The president's failure in Afghanistan would be America's failure, and we cannot allow this to happen. Defeat for America in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be avoided only if Democrats acknowledge that the Afghans need major help . . .

As I have written, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are central to American foreign policy today. Afghanistan is least important of the three. But Afghanistan sits between the two nuclear/near-nuclear Islamic powder kegs, we are there, and we need to stay, help, and do well. Republicans should support centerist Democrat efforts to help Afghanistan, and combat the left's push to get out.

Hating Half America

The Emmys were on last night. John Stewart, the fake news broadcaster, won one for writing. They also had a clip of Stewart saying,

[Michelle Obama] must prove she loves America, as opposed to Republicans, who everyone knows love America. They just hate half the people living in it

.
Stewart said this sometime ago, but CBS repeating the words last night updates the comment to today. I think most of Stewart’s audience shares his perspective—Republicans hate half America. And if Republicans hate me, well, I can hate back. And I darn well better hate back!

Look at this Gallup Poll chart on Obama’s job approval (above). Draw a line below “conservative Democrat,” and notice how that line divides America. The nation is two-thirds non-Hispanic white. Add white Democrats to the non-white, Hispanic portion of our population showing at the top of chart, and you have the “half” Stewart probably believes Republicans “hate.” It’s an oversimplification, but so is much of politics.

Of course, as a group, Republicans don’t hate non-whites. White independents and Republicans, in fact, are troubled by the mostly white national elite. This elite thinks that because Republicans are racist, their Democrats are the only party able to represent non-whites. This elite thinking works, because non-whites see only limited evidence Republicans and conservatives care about them.

So Stewart gets away with preaching race-based hatred. And he will continue to do so, as long as Republicans fail to compete effectively for Hispanic and Asian-American votes.

Gone, Gone . . . Gone

"Why are there so few Ted Kennedys in Washington today?" asks the Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib. He answers:

In the past generation, the two parties have sorted out by ideology and by geography. They have moved steadily toward opposite ends of the political spectrum, leaving fewer moderate centrists from either party who can stand on the middle ground where compromises are made and deals are done.

"I think it has everything to do with the ideological polarization of the parties that began in the late '70s and built over a period of time, and the dominance of ideological thinking," says Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution who has studied this evolution. "It has now built to an extent, and to a point, where it becomes extremely difficult for someone to really stray" from either end of the spectrum.

Sen. Kennedy. . . was an unabashed liberal, yes, but also an iconic figure, secure in his place as senator-for-life from Massachusetts and free to set his own course.

Green Shoots

The day of Bernanke’s reappointment, the stock market reached a new Obama-era high. My FOX Index is also at a recession era peak, 56.1% of the way from its March 9 bottom to its pre-crash healthy level (12,000 Dow, 1,300 S&P, 2,500 NASDAQ).

Most significantly, a housing recovery may be underway. Though home prices are still 30% below the mid-2006 peak, the Case-Shiller's U.S. National Home Price Index is now positive; prices in the second quarter posted their first quarterly increase in three years. Furthermore, consumer confidence in August rose to the highest level since the recession began.

Green shoots, yes.

Ben Bernanke

Obama is wise to reappoint Republican and Bush appointee Ben Bernanke to a second term as Federal Reserve chairman. Larry Summers, Obama’s White House economic advisor, wanted the job and was seemingly set to get it. But if Obama went with Summers, he would have to find a new economic advisor, and Obama would saddle his team with full responsibility for whatever went wrong economically.

By sticking with Bernanke, who will face tough questioning and many “no” votes from Congress, Obama continues to share blame for the recession with the Bush team and its Fed chair who failed to anticipate the severity of the housing and related credit crises, whose fingerprints are all over the Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG collapses along with the mishandled merger of Merrill Lynch into Bank of America, and who helped engineer the controversial taxpayer-funded bailout of major financial institutions. Moreover, Obama is making Bernanke the point person for getting financial reform legislation through Congress, and can leave Bernanke exposed and responsible for any interest rate hikes needed to cope with Obama’s looming federal deficits.

Furthermore, by reappointing Bernanke, Obama reassures stock market investors who credit Bernanke with acting swiftly once the crisis was underway to lower interest rates to zero and push out $2 trillion worth of credits, two actions that probably did the most to turn a Great Depression-like collapse into just a severe recession. Reappointing Bernanke, therefore, helps keep the current recovery going.

Bernanke found out last Wednesday about his reappointment, and two days later, at the Fed’s annual meeting, gave the kind of defense of his tenure as Fed chair that he may later present to Congress:

History is full of examples in which the policy responses to financial crises have been slow and inadequate, often resulting ultimately in greater economic damage and increased fiscal costs. In this episode, by contrast, policymakers in the United States and around the globe responded with speed and force to arrest a rapidly deteriorating and dangerous situation. Looking forward, we must urgently address structural weaknesses in the financial system, in particular in the regulatory framework, to ensure that the enormous costs of the past two years will not be borne again.

Good move, Obama. You now become the sixth straight president, in my humble opinion, to handle correctly that key Fed chair appointment.

Yukio Hatoyama

Under the U.S. occupation, Japan became a multiparty democracy in 1945. English-speaking, pro- American Catholic Shigeru Yoshida was its first noteworthy prime minister, serving from 1946-47, then from 1948-54. Japan’s postwar economic boom kicked off under Yoshida’s rule. So too did the long-running rule of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), though the LDP took its current form in 1955 under Ichiro Hatoyama, who ousted Yoshida in December 1954. The LDP has held power 53 of the 54 years since.

The LDP leader is Japan’s current prime minister, Taro Aso, Yoshida’s grandson. And for the first time in Japan’s post-war history, in eight days Japan will enshrine a genuine two-party system, when the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) takes over. The DPJ is headed by Yukio Hatoyama, Ichiro Hatayama’s grandson. Hatoyama is expected to prevail in the battle of grandsons, replacing Yoshida grandson Aso as prime minister, once the DPJ ousts the LDP.

Hatoyama, Obama-style, is running as the candidate of “change” (he uses the English word). Like Obama, he calls for expanding the social safety net, and blames “market fundamentalism” for Japan’s current economic problems. But Hatoyama’s main thrust is reforming Japan’s powerful but unpopular civil service. And a second goal, somewhat ironically given Hatoyama’s four-generation political lineage, is banning “hereditary” candidates; it’s a widespread LDP practice to pass Diet seats directly from father to son.

Yowzie.

Obama’s job approval rating today dropped through another support level. It’s below 52.9%, Obama’s share of the 2008 presidential vote. In fact, it hit 51.4% today in the RealClearPolitics average; 51% in Gallup, 51% in Pew.

Obama still has a high rating compared to Bush 43’s second-term average. Bush’s ratings, however, killed not only his party’s chances in two elections, but also his ability to govern. Furthermore, Bush didn’t drop below his first-term election win percentage (47.9%) until May 2004, during his fourth year, and then only after the Abu Ghraib pictures were all over TV the previous week. That’s little consolation for Obama, especially since Bill Clinton’s job approval ratings never fell below Clinton’s election-winning percentages of 43.0% in 1992 and 49.2% in 1996.

Obama’s 52.9% winning percentage was the highest since 1988, and that higher figure’s an easier floor through which to fall. Still, it’s a fact that Obama, now just seven months in office, has less popular support than he had when he was elected. Yowzie.

Meeting at the Middle

Ross Douthat [left] and Bob Beckel face similar challenges. Douthat writes for the liberal New York Times, and Beckel is a commentator for the conservative outlet FOX News. But Douthat is a Republican with a book to his credit on how to reform the GOP. And Beckel is a Democrat who managed Walter Mondale’s 1984 campaign for president. Both have learned how to operate in unfriendly environments, very much like the New York Times’ David Brooks and FOX News commentator Mara Liasson, the odd pair we discussed favorably earlier.

Now both have columns on how to fix health care, Beckel (not Douthat) telling Obama how to win over Republicans, Douthat (not Beckel) telling Republicans how they should support Obama. Both columns make sense to me; too bad both will be ignored.

Beckel says Obama should support tort reform, quoting Obama in 1996 saying, "Anyone who denies there is a crisis in medical malpractice is probably a trial lawyer." Beckel’s key points:

➢ Democrats advocating medical tort reform will fundamentally change the healthcare reform debate and in the process may save universal healthcare legislation.

➢ [According to the Congressional Budget Office,] “studies have found that state level tort reforms have decreased the number of lawsuits filed, lowered the value of claims and damage awards... thereby reducing general insurance premiums. Indeed premiums fell by 40% for some commercial policies".

➢ adding tort reform to healthcare legislation will instantaneously change the debate; take a major weapon to defeat healthcare reform from the GOP arsenal[, and]; bring huge numbers of doctors and healthcare providers to the reformers side.

➢ National standards for medical malpractice would mandate full payment for economic damages[, and] a cap of $250,000 in punitive damages would be a reasonable award in most . . . cases. [Anyway,] trail lawyers won't abandon [Democrats] because they have nowhere else to go.

Douthat should be a hero to all Democrats for advising Republicans “to say ‘no’ to retirees.” Talk about something that won’t happen!

As Douthat notes, Republicans have suffered for decades from Democrats demagoging the GOP for proposing even modest changes to Social Security and Medicare. Now, all of a sudden, the tables are turned, and Republicans are surging by defending seniors against Obama’s proposals to lower Medicare costs. Douthat adds that Americans over 50 cast over 40% of the votes in the 2008 elections, and half the votes in the ’06 midterms. Republicans just aren’t going to give back the amazing gift Obama handed them when he proposed to reduce Medicare funding.

I was disgusted when many Democrats who knew better demagogued Republicans on Iraq because they knew voters hate war, and will back fighting only when the U.S. is directly attacked. In spite of Iraq, and in spite of Democrats’ past demagoging on Social Security and Medicare reform, I would agree with Douthat that Republicans should help Obama curb rising Medicare costs.

Republicans should be better than Democrats, not happily matching their demagoguery. Anyway, I applaud both Beckel and Douthat for searching for a middle way that works, however futile the effort.

Don’t fact check using Michael Moore.

Steve Chapmen writes for the Chicago Tribune, sister publication of the LA Times. Without mentioning the famous “docudrama” maker, Chapman debunks many Michael Moore findings from “Sicko”. Chapman reports:

➢ the United States spends more on health care than anyone else, and . . . we rank below . . . other advanced countries in life expectancy. [But i]n their 2006 book The Business of Health, economists Robert L. Ohsfeldt and John E. Schneider [found] out . . . the U.S. would rank [first] in life span . . . if homicides and accidents are factored out.

➢ Canada and Europe may sound like Health Heaven, but they fall short of our model when it comes to combating life-threatening diseases. . . Samuel Preston and Jessica Ho of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania examined survival rates for lung, breast, prostate, colon and rectum cancers in 18 countries and found that Americans fared best. . . [and] we get quicker access to new cancer drugs than anyone else.

➢ The U.S. also excelled [in] surviving heart attacks for more than a year. . . our doctors and patients don't take no for an answer. The researchers attribute the results to "wider screening and more aggressive treatment."

➢ [Having uninsured] Americans . . . is our greatest shortcoming. . . But they have it better than you might think. Some 62% of uninsured Americans are satisfied with their medical care. . . they get a lot of uncompensated treatment from the most advanced, ambitious and capable medical system in the world.

➢ In Britain, . . .having guaranteed access to care doesn't mean you'll actually get it. 20% of British cancer patients who might be cured become incurable while awaiting . . . treatment.

Chapman’s conclusion:

A hammer is a marvelous tool, but [if] you took an expensive watch to a repairman and he pulled out a hammer, you would be extremely nervous, if not aghast. . . The challenge in this country is to extend coverage to the uninsured without degrading quality for everyone. . .

[T]he president and Congress . . . need to put down the hammer.

Why Recovery Might Be Slow

Economic recovery seems to be underway. Still, with consumer spending the key to economic activity (70% of GDP), news that retail sales (consumer buying) unexpectedly dropped, along with the University of Michigan index of consumer confidence, plucks out a sour note of caution. Consumers have a hard time feeling positive with unemployment still rising and annual housing price levels still sinking.

Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University’s business school, predicted in 2005 that a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust would trigger a deep U.S. recession. So we should listen up when Roubini today tells us:

➢ during post-war recessions, average monthly job losses ranged between 150,000 and 260,000. Average monthly losses in this recession are still at 350,000. For the labor market to stabilize, job losses need to slow to 100,000 to 150,000 per month.

➢ the economy has lost over 6.6 million jobs since the recession began; in previous recessions job losses only ranged between 1.5 million and 2.5 million.

➢ companies are reducing compensation and work hours to keep a lid on labor costs. Private sector labor compensation slowed to 1.5% in the 12 months ending June 2009, the smallest increase on record.

➢ Average weekly hours in the private sector, despite slightly improving in July 2009, are still hovering at record-low levels. Company efforts to maintain profit margins through lower pay will backfire in the form of subdued sales as labor incomes suffer.

➢ 53% of the unemployed have been jobless for over three months and 34% of them for over six months, the highest share on record. Over 50% of the unemployed have lost their jobs permanently, again the highest on record.

➢ inadequate safety nets, the dearth of labor retraining programs and tight access to student loans suggest that when workers begin looking for work during the recovery, they will face skill mismatches helping raise structural unemployment from below 5% in 2007 to close to 7%.

➢ consumer credit has been contracting since Q4 2008, and mortgage equity withdrawal is negative as home prices have about 10% more to fall.

➢ investment recovery will lag consumption recovery. With sluggish consumer spending and rampant excess capacity in the economy (capacity utilization is at a record low of 68% compared to the historical average of 81%), firms will be reluctant to invest in structures and equipment. It may take years for capacity utilization to return to pre-recession levels.

➢ the inventory-to-sales ratio hasn't come down significantly (the ratio is still over 1.40, while the historical average ratio is close to 1.25). This is because sales are plunging faster than inventory drawdown.

➢ in short, the economy might sink into lower growth sometime in 2010, because the U.S. consumer is still pulling back.

What’s Going On?

You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today – Ya

--Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On”


1.

Camille Paglia, a noted anti-feminist, is unhappy with how Obama is handling health care specifically and domestic policy in general. But she writes in the liberal “Salon,” and she wants to keep elite readers listening to her views. So here’s how she establishes her bona fides:

Buyer's remorse? Not me. . . President Obama. . .representing the U.S. with dignity and authority abroad. This is why I, for one, voted for Obama and continue to support him. The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair.

Comment: So what if “old Europe” elites attacked their American friends for letting cowboys into the White House? It’s embarrassing we still cater to that prejudice. Bush correctly backed Eastern European countries against Russian bullying, removed al Qaeda from Afghanistan, liberated Iraq from Saddam and stayed until American-led forces defeated both al Qaeda Iraq and the Iran-backed al Sadr militia, dealt effectively with China and India, skillfully with Pakistan, and did his best to isolate Iran. Today, the U.S. stands taller in the eyes of all who care about those accomplishments. But in Paglia’s world (a large one), Bush remains a “feckless buffoon”. No wonder liberals and conservatives don’t get along.

2.

Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal editorial board has found the White House’s only real war. It’s on fellow Americans:

former ABC reporter Linda Douglass [launched the] White House effort to set Americans against one another—the good Americans protecting the president’s health-care program [against] the bad Americans fighting it and undermining truth and goodness. . .[White House operatives] are . . . concerned with just one message. Which is that the Obama adminis- tration is in possession of vital answers to ills and inequities that have long afflicted American society (whether Americans know it or not), and that those opposed . . . are cynics, or operatives of the powerful vested interests responsible for the plight Americans find themselves in (whether they know it or not), or political enemies bent on destroying the Obama administration.

Comment: America has real enemies. They are overseas, not at home.

3.

Fred Hiatt, Washington Post editorial page editor, writes that Obama has lined up:

key players who in the past would have opposed reform: insurers, the drug industry, hospitals, the American Medical Association.

Comment: OK, so the key industry leadership—insurers, the drug makers, the hospitals—and the key union (the American Medical Association) are all on board. Game over. Isn’t America just labor plus management chiefs, and when they agree, it’s settled?

Hiatt, you’re not serious! As I said, Obama’s problem with health care reform is that most people are happy with what they have, and feel threatened by change. That’s the main show. What a strange view to think of the politics of health care reform as just buying off the leadership of industry and labor. Honestly, wake up. Smell the unwashed masses.

4.

Andrew Breitbart at breitbart.com writes:

The mainstream media and the Democratic Party are working in concert to make sure that what happened to President Bush -- sustained organized grass-roots protests ("mobs," if you will), relentless media criticism and permanent opposition- party obstructionism -- does not happen to their guy.

Comment: Breitbart is onto something. The media know that though there were many, they needed just a few anti-Bush folks to build the story America was fed up with our president. Now all of a sudden, a few people are on TV attacking Obama. Don’t people know how easy it is to find folks who share the reporter’s view? Media folks are saying, “We did it, so we’re qualified to expose any such effort as false. We’ll make sure they don’t do to us what we did to them.”

Can’t we instead just listen to the people’s various voices?

Polls: Nation Divided, Independents Libertarian, Voters Conservative, Presidents Hurt their Party

Two observers of Pennsylvania politics, Terry Madonna and Michael Young, have looked at why the re-election bid of Arlen Specter, the Quaker State’s longest serving senator ever, is drawing such heated opposition. They conclude the moderate Specter has become “the poster child for the accelerating ideological polarization of American politics.” Moderates are an endangered species. Moderation, they say, is “all but dead in American politics.”

The in-depth Pew poll we examined earlier re-enforces Madonna’s and Young’s conclusion. Pew found that the average difference between Republicans and Democrats is up from 11% in 2002 to an all-time high of 16% today.

That means there are two polarized camps battling for independents. And these independents, the Pew survey shows, lean toward Democrats on social and national defense issues, Republicans on the economy and the social safety net.

Yet the Pew poll responses by independents suggest a consistency Pew failed to note in its accompanying narrative. Independents are libertarians. They favor less government in their lives. On social issues, Republicans want an activist government; independents don’t. On national defense, Republicans support more involvement overseas; independents don’t.

But like Republicans and unlike Democrats, independents believe government has too much control over our lives, think government is inefficient and wasteful, feel government regulation of business does more harm than good, reject paying for environmental protection with higher prices, won’t go into debt to help the needy, don’t see society divided between “haves” and “have nots,” and do favor nuclear power. And consistent with their anti-government bias, independents are less likely to vote than either Republicans or Democrats.

The Pew survey's lining up independents with Republicans against government activism seems consistent with Pew’s previously-mentioned finding--one supported by a separate Gallup survey--that voters are twice as likely to be conservative as to be liberal.

Polls showing 1) independents occupy the key middle ground, 2) independents are wary of government control, and 3) voters lean conservative; all are cautionary notes for the Obama administration. Also cautionary: Pew’s discovery of how unsuccessful most presidents since World War II have been at helping their party. Under Reagan (1980-88), party identification shifted a significant 13% in Republicans' favor. Every other president (Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43) except Kennedy (no change during his shortened term) saw his party lose support during the president's tenure.