Entangled Alliances

As a quick follow-up to my last post on Obama’s State of the Union address, I want to briefly talk about the Republican response to the President’s speech. I say briefly, because I couldn’t watch more than thirty seconds of it since it was clear that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s decision to give it in a bizarre rapid-fire, sing-song delivery was a cripplingly embarrassing one. However the transcript of his speech shows that the content was just as embarrassing – inherently flawed and politically deaf criticism of the stimulus package combined with a complete lack of alternative solutions. How very Republican… Excitable journalists like to talk up the thrilling prospect of a Obama v Jindal showdown (no doubt thinking about the endless “Black President vs Indian candidate: how historic!” articles they could reel off). Hopefully, then, his pathetic response to Obama’s stunning address will dampen the media frenzy around him. And if you believe that, then you’ll believe me when I say I’m off to sit in my solid gold chair and smoke some hundred pound notes. Being a billionaire is fun!

What was perhaps most shocking about Jindal’s response was the brazen insanity of it: in the midst of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, with Republican stock still at an all-time low, their response is to stubbornly stick to the tired old mantra of “government is bad, tax cuts are good”. The craziness of such a strategy was perhaps best summed up by conservative commentator David Brooks, who eviscerated it in shockingly extreme language (for a Republican), calling it a “disaster”, “insane” and “a form of nihilism” . Watch it for yourself, it’s really quite damning:

photo credit: tsevis

Obama’s first State of the Union address was pretty accomplished. And I don’t say that to damn him with faint praise. I could go on about how it was an uplifting speech – and it was. I could go on about how steadfast Obama seemed in the face of economic crisis. And he did. And I could definitely go on about how deftly he mixed the substantive with the personal- the story about the guy who gave his bonus out to his employees was a nice touch, and if you didn’t get a lump in your throat at the mention of that young girl’s remarkable letter then you probably have a model number stamped somewhere on you. But, more than anything, it accomplished what Obama set out to do: that is, lay the groundwork for what is set to be the biggest program of reforms since the Great Society – or maybe even the New Deal. Not only did he put the finishing touches on his case for the recently passed economic stimulus, but he tackled all the big legislative issues ahead of him: the budget; the bank, housing market and auto bailouts; climate change; healthcare reform; education. In doing so he not only framed the debate to come, but deftly rebuffed the objections of the cynics before they’ve even had time to get going.  So yeah, I could go on about how it was was uplifting and stirring. And it really was. But what this speech showed more than anything else is that Obama isn’t going to let anything get in the way of the huge, unprecedented reforms that are coming to America this year – he’s going to control the debate and not repeat the mistakes of the stimulus battle.

Here, then, are what I think were the top 10 key quotes from Obama’s State of the Union. These weren’t necessarily the most memorable or stirring of lines – for that, we have the endless analysis of cable tv – but the lines that I felt were most important, at least in terms of the battles to come. (You can read the transcript of the speech here)

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Looks like Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius is going to be President Obama’s choice for HHS, following the ignominious withdrawal of Tom Daschle.  Seems to me that Obama never misses an opportunity to make an easy Senate pick-up.  Must be infuriating to be Bob Menendez.

Talking of President Obama, he’s making his first “overseas” trip this week: to Canada.  Meanwhile, Hillary’s touring the Far East, assuring the Indonesians that Obama will find time to visit them eventually.  Don’t remember people being so keen for Air Force One to touch down when it was carrying the Texan…

photo credit: azipaybarah

Meanwhile, Hillary as elder stateswoman is putting into stark contrast the gun-totin’ (literally) ways of her successor.  Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, whose associations with the NRA are well known, caved in to those dastardly NYC liberals this week and removed the rifles from under her bed (insert lament for Caroline Kennedy here).

Gillibrand is far from the only recently-appointed Senator in the news.  In the never-ending saga of the Illinois Senate seat, Roland Burris, former (i.e. impeached and ousted) Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s choice as Obama’s replacement, is under active investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee.  It might only be a matter of time before he is forced out, and Illinois’ senior Senator, Dick Durbin, already seems to be distancing himself.  All this seems to lead credence to Russ Feingold’s suggested 28th Amendment, an end to gubernatorial appointments for empty Senate seats.  This article from The Economist makes the case.

In other news, this week, Facebook was forced into a volte-face regarding its terms of use.  It had unilaterally appropriated the rights to everything you post or write on its site.  It’s only a matter of time, however, before they find some other way to do this.  Generation Y needs to wake up and realise that privacy online is a major issue.  You write something on Facebook, or post the pictures from that drunken party, and it’s in the public domain forever.  Check out the interesting debate going on at the New York Times about the future of ’social spaces’ online.

photo credit: Compound Eye

Amid an awful lot of recessionary gloom, Europe may have taken a small but significant step forward with a new report out by the New Carbon Finance group, which shows that the EU’s ETS (Emission Trading Scheme) may actually be working. I don’t know how authoritative this report is, and the difficulties of tracking carbon  emissions across Europe force us to take each report with a grain of salt.  Indeed, I would hesitate to call this authoritative until further reports can confirm.  However, if it is true, this could well be a turning point in the struggle against Climate Change.

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There’s an episode of South Park where one of the kids’ dads, Randy, keeps getting into fights at baseball games. Every time he gets dragged off by the police, he drunkenly castigates the cops, shouting, outraged: Is this America? Are we in America? I thought we were in America!

That episode has been on my mind a lot lately, as  I just can’t quite believe that the United States, traditionally a country with an extremely suspicious attitude towards socialism and anything associated with socialist ideas, should be having a genuine public debate about nationalising banks. As Randy said, I thought this was America. This isn’t just a back and forth on the pages of the New York Times, either. Obama himself has been publicly chewing over the idea:

Sweden, on the other hand, had a problem like this. They took over the banks, nationalized them, got rid of the bad assets, resold the banks and, a couple years later, they were going again. So you’d think looking at it, Sweden looks like a good model. Here’s the problem; Sweden had like five banks. [LAUGHS] We’ve got thousands of banks. You know, the scale of the U.S. economy and the capital markets are so vast and the problems in terms of managing and overseeing anything of that scale, I think, would — our assessment was that it wouldn’t make sense. And we also have different traditions in this country.

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Obama’s stimulus bill is finally law, all 787 billion dollars of it.  On Friday, the final version of the bill passed the House 246- 183 and the Senate 60-38. Once again, not a single house Republican voted for it. In the Senate, it only got three GOP votes.   It’s been a long, arduous process as Republicans did their best to try and sabotage America’s best hope of getting its economy back on track. But now the stimulus package is law and, though its not quite as big as it should have been, it’s still a great piece of legislation.

However, now the dust has settled on a bruising legislative battle it looks like there has been a casualty. Bipartisanship is dead, long live bipartisanship:

White House aides say they have concluded that Obama too frequently lost control of the debate and his own image during the stimulus battle. By this reckoning, the story became too much about failed efforts at bipartisanship and Washington deal-making, and not enough about the president’s public salesmanship.

For Obama’s next act, the program is the same as he has been planning for months: New Deal-style plans to rescue struggling homeowners and rewrite regulations on the financial markets, plus a budget proposal that lays the groundwork for sweeping health care reform.

But the strategy to promote these items is getting an emergency overhaul. Obama plans to travel more and campaign more in an effort to pressure lawmakers with public support, rather than worrying about whether he can win over Republican votes in Congress.

Obama has obviously finally noticed what the rest of us have been screaming at him : bipartisanship isn’t working. To celebrate the President’s epiphany I present to you five truisms that might have persuaded the president that bipartisanship is, well, pretty rubbish really:

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photo credit: jmtimages

Right now, Obama’s struggle with congressional Republicans feels a bit like a classic movie with the new sheriff. You know, the new friendly Sheriff comes into town, he’s polite, courteous almost to a fault, he tries to be friends, but instead all the powers regard him as a pushover.  They overreach, treat him with contempt, and carry on their old bad habits.

You see, Obama came into Washington after sweeping up the nation with a campaign of hope and a new direction, he promised bipartisanship – dined with conservative pundits, he had a cocktail party with congressional leaders from both sides, he backed this up with more meetings and urged both sides to find some common ground. In return the House Republicans delivered a stunning zero votes, zero, not one house Republican thought the necessity of the stimulus outweighed the cons.

That’s one punch to the face but hey, it might take these guys some time to get used to the new sheriff  and the House is more partisan anyway. The Senate, is the more measured and balance chamber, the wise musings of  men committed to the good of America regardless of party….

But wait, Senate Republicans  bemoan the lack of tax cuts, they want tax cuts to have close to  1:1 ratio in the stimulus.

TAX CUTS! Talk about a broken record.  Still our Sheriff labours on hoping that the Senate can get their act together, probably at this point casting a glance at Minnesota and the devoted public servant that is Norm  Coleman. Who, having no chance of winning has worked tirelessly to ensure the people of Minnesota stay as unrepresented for as long as possible (FiveThirtyEight has the latest here).  Obama labours on, surely they see the danger the US economy is in, surely they must see how a stimulus could work? Heck, even many of their own back it; even devout pork-fighter Palin (couldn’t resist) backs it.

But instead they delay and propose pointless alternatives that need to be cleared. Then, perhaps the final straw, they start pushing around his deputy, Hilda Solis, not once but twice. Nobody, but nobody should pick on the deputy. Oh, and to add insult to injury, guess who’s sniping from the sidelines?

Obama had even given some advance notice – a polite warning shot: ” I won” he noted, as they bemoaned his stimulus. He pointed out his electoral landslide, which in no small part was a vote on the economy,  a landslide that swept many of these Republican Senators states. But they didn’t listen.

Then the fightback begins.  With support from the White House, tired of the delays in Solis’ confirmation hearings, Unions and Hispanic support groups are pushing back. This is followed by the big gun, an open asault on the lunacy of the Republicans, to get the Bill passed.

The Result: This: essentially a minor victory for Republicans who not only trim down spending in areas such as education and science (both vital to the economy and jobs), but get to keep their taxes.

Hopefully our Sheriff has learnt from this experience, as Ed pointed out in an earlier post, there is no point meeting someone half way when their starting point is a terrible idea. They wanted tax cuts, Obama’s Bill actually started with tax cuts, but Republicans then sought to massively expand on the tax cuts, (claiming the whole bill was spending and framing it so by their huge presence in the media). Obama, remember, has also promised not to directly repeal the Bush super tax cuts, in light of the recession.

So despite effectively having had two rounds of tax cuts for free, receiving an electoral hammering and facing a President with exceptional popularity, Republicans defiantly watered down the parts of the stimulus which would actually stimulate the economy and demanded more tax cuts to boot.

He’s got a bloody nose for sure, Nate Silver’s excellent article underlines the cost to Obama of failing to sell his plan (his own punches were too late). But Obama shouldn’t give up on bipartisanship.  He probably got skinned in the first round, but he’s got brilliant media strategists of his own.  Next time he needs to get out early to frame the debate and give Republicans less room for manoeuvre.

Tom Daschle’s withdrawal from the nomination for Health and Human Services Secretary following revelations about his unpaid taxes has sent shockwaves throughout Washington.  No one saw it coming – and it’s not often you can say that. With regards to the logic behind his withdrawal, the always excellent Ezra Klein hits the nail on the head. The key point:

There was always something studiedly vague about Obama’s insistence that he would battle a culture in which “our leaders have thrown open the doors of Congress and the White House to an army of Washington lobbyists who have turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.” Obama could not remake Washington anew. His administration would certainly face unwanted scandal and welcome proficient rogues.

But it turns out that Obama’s words, well, mattered. They made it harder to ignore scandal, as the Bush administration had done. The endlessly long vetting forms forcing deep tax and income transparency, which in turn uncovered embarrassments that would never have emerged under past regimes. This has made for a more troubled transition, but will probably also result in a cleaner administration. For all the embarrassments, this, in a concrete sense, is what change looks like. It’s not an administration that decides to be clean so much as one that has little choice in the matter.

In other words: if you raise the bar, you have to be able to jump over it.

The shock felt by those on the left is no doubt accentuated by not knowing how to react.  On the one hand, it’s a massive blow to hopes of U.S. health reform given that Daschle, as former Senate Majority Leader and much-loved Washington insider, was uniquely placed to shepherd health care reform through Congress. Undoubtedly one of the key factors in the failure of Clinton’s health reform efforts back in ‘94 was the failure of the White House and Congress to work together. In this regard, Obama choosing Daschle was a genius move.  On the other hand however, the issue of Daschle’s tax returns also brought to light his unsavoury history of taking money from lobbyists and the pharmaceutical industry; discussed in Ezra’s piece but examined in greater detail in a typically merciless  Glenn Greenwald post. Greenwald’s money quote:

He embodies everything that is sleazy, sickly, and soul-less about Washington.  It’s probably impossible for Obama to fill his cabinet with individuals entirely free of Beltway filth — it’s extremely rare to get anywhere near that system without being infected by it — but Daschle oozes Beltway slime from every pore.

Bad for health reform but good for ethics? Or just plain shocking?

Who knew Newsweek was so down with pop culture? Maybe there’s life in the weeklies yet…

photo credit: haaaley

In Mark Bailey’s post below he pointed out the net loss of Obama’s soon-to-be-confirmed pick of Republican Senator Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary and asks the question: did Obama get played?

Well, I hope  he got played, because the alternative -that he genuinely thinks Judd Gregg is a good pick – is pretty unsavoury . But I don’t think he did.  I find it hard to believe that Obama and his advisors, when considering whether this was a sneaky chance to get a 60th seat in the Senate,  didn’t take into account the possibility that Judd Gregg would demand his replacement be a Republican and that New Hampshire governor Jon Lynch would in fact appoint a Republican to replace him (which is, as Mark points out,  now the likely outcome). Obama’s team aren’t idiots, nor are they risk takers. There must have been more going on than pure numbers politics, indeed it’s more likely that any positive in terms of an extra senate seat was thought of as merely a possible bonus.

Therefore, I think Obama’s decision was down to one of three reasons, or perhaps a combination of the three:

1) Obama wants to repair the olive branch to Republicans damaged by arguments over the Stimulus Package

2) Obama thinks that Gregg will be a moderate at Commerce and likes the idea of having plenty of moderates around

3) Obama thinks that his administration’s faith in government spending needs to be somewhat balanced out by a fiscal conservative

If any of these three reasons were really an operating factor in the decision, then this means that we are faced yet again with the same flawed bipartisanship logic that I decried in my post “Bipartisanship for Dummies: Stupid Compromise on the Stimulus Package”. As far as this situation goes, it does not make sense to support a stimulus package that has, as its main principle, faith in Government spending … and then appoint a doctrinaire fiscal conservative like Judd Gregg to Commerce.  In short, this does not bode well for those who hoped that Obama’s “post-partisanship” would actually lead to common sense progressive solutions as opposed to the same old Bipartisanship Baloney.