My Support: the Kiss of Death
I realized something on my way home from the gym tonight: for as long as I've been entitled to vote, my presidential candidates of choice have never even won the nomination, much less taken office.

In 1992, I defended Bob Kerrey through innumerable late-night freshman year dorm hall arguments (in truth, I had little better to do). Four years later I didn't really have an opinion; I wasn't going to vote for the Republican, and Clinton was going to get remoninated. In 2000 I was a big Bill Bradley fan; last time around, at different points I was for Dean, Clark and Edwards. It was almost like I was consciously avoiding anyone even sort of viable.

I mention this because the Hillary Clinton train continues to chug along. Wes Clark, probably the 2004-cycle candidate I was most into, endorsed Lady Triangula this weekend. She's evidently suffering no damage from Norman Hsu's troubles (and presumably her scores of advisors are offering up prayers of thanks that O.J. is back in the news--it really is the '90s again!). And the Obama and Edwards campaigns can't get any traction.

All this despite the fact that Sen. Clinton still doesn't seem to have any answer for why she's running for president, beyond the zombie mantra of her flacks: "strength and experience, strength and experience, strength and experience..."

But history suggests that if I don't get a candidate's appeal, that candidate probably has a good thing going.

Loose Ends
A few semi-random links and musings on current events:

• Ed Kilgore ponders the "interesting times" of the last ten years in American politics--impeachment, a contested election, a major attack on American soil, a disastrous war of choice, and the partial destruction of a great city, all for the first time since the 19th century or ever--and provides an important reminder that the Republican Party, based on its current crop of presidential candidates, seems fairly proud of what they've wrought. It's astonishing, and endlessly depressing, that we share a country with millions of these people; it's almost enough to lead me to the conclusion that maybe the country just isn't so hot, after all. The fact that the Imbecile-in-Chief continues to play transparent political games with the tragic Iraq war is bad enough; that he's more or less allowed to get away with this by a still-supine press corps and a perpetually timid Democratic opposition is perhaps worse.


• Speaking of the Party of Lesser Evils, Philadelphia Inquirer political columnist and blogger Dick Polman sets out the story of Hillary Clinton and Democratic fundraiser/criminal fugitive Norman Hsu. I remember being very turned off, in the waning days of the 1996 campaign, by some of Bill Clinton's scummier fundraising activities that were then coming to light; it doesn't seem like they've learned much, or repented at all.
  
  

  The FBI is conducting preliminary inquiries into Hsu's bundling activities and business dealings; the Manhattan DA is investigating whether Hsu bilked a private equity firm in a Ponzi scheme. But what interests me is how the Clinton campaign has reacted to all this:
  
  With all the speed of a turtle trundling through molasses.
  
  Its first response, last June, was total denial. When a California businessman reportedly emailed the campaign to warn that "there is a significant probability that a man using the name of Norman Hsu is running a Ponzi scheme," a campaign official emailed back to say, "I can tell you with 100 certainty that Norman Hsu is NOT involved in a ponzi scheme. He is COMPLETELY legit."
  
  Its second response, also last June, was to search public records for information about Hsu, but aides turned up nothing. Apparently they didn't look very hard, because The Washington Post pointed out yesterday that "a commonly used public record search shows that Hsu had multiple business lawsuits filed against him dating back to 1985, filed for bankruptcy in 1990, and was a defendant in two Californis court matters listed as possible criminal cases."
  
  The campaign's third response, when suspicions about Hsu surfaced in the press in late August, was to praise their bundler. A Clinton flak said: "Norman Hsu is a longtime and generous supporter of the Democratic party and its candidates, including Senator Clinton. During Mr. Hsu’s many years of active participation in the political process, there has been no question about his integrity or his commitment to playing by the rules, and we have absolutely no reason to call his contributions into question." The campaign also said that it would not return any of the Hsu-related campaign contributions.
  
  The campaign's fourth response was to grudgingly give ground. After it became clear that Hsu was a fugitive from justice, and after other Democratic candidates made it clear that they intended to purge themselves of Hsu money, Clinton did the same, by donating to charity $23,000 that Hsu had personally donated. But the campaign made this announcement in the early evening, after most East Coast news deadlines...and made it clear that Clinton was refusing to give back the donations that Hsu had bundled from others.
  
  The campaign's fifth response came this past Monday evening. After learning that the FBI was on Hsu's trail, and after learning that The Los Angeles Times had obtained those aforementioned emails (the heads-up from the California businessman, and the 100 percent denial from the campaign), Clinton decided to give back the donations that Hsu had bundled from others. That's the $850,000. But the campaign, to soften the blow, made this announcement in the early evening (sound familiar?), after most East Coast news deadlines, and after the network news shows had gone on the air in the East, mostly with the dominant coverage of the Petraus hearings on Iraq. And now the campaign is refusing to disclose the names of the 260 bundlees who are poised to get their money back.

  
  I hope that any of her rivals who choose to attack The Empress on this--I doubt Obama will, for both style and substance reasons, but Edwards certainly might--will note that Sen. Clinton, like Bill, always has had a high comfort level with pay-to-play politics and disdain, if not disgust, for attempts to regulate the system. She was the leading opponent within the Democratic Senate caucus to the McCain-Feingold reform, mocking Russ Feingold for his naivete and complaining that the reform would destroy Democrats' political competitiveness.
  
  As quarterly reporting numbers for the congressional campaign committees and the presidential candidates themselves have shown again and again, this hasn't exactly been the case--and while I'm not saying that Feingold foresaw the political and technological changes that would make the Democrats more than competitive in fund-raising, I think the point is that he put principle first whatever the outcome. Has Hillary Clinton ever done as much?


• Related to all this, the recent news about next year's Senate races--most notably the retirements of John Warner (VA) and Chuck Hagel (NE) and the possible/likely candidacies of Mark Warner and Bob Kerrey to replace them--combined with the likelihood that the Democrats will nominate Senator Clinton, could contribute to an outcome that I believe is unprecedented: the Democrats lose their House majority while making big gains in the Senate. I've written before about my belief that Sen. Clinton will endanger, probably doom, many of the Democratic Representatives who won last year in districts where Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004. And I'm still waiting for some smart national political reporter to contact the offices of, say, Reps. Ellsworth in Indiana, Shuler of North Carolina, or Boyda of Kansas to ask them how they feel about running "with" someone perceived as a veritable devil by many of their constituents. But I think her impact in the Senate races will be much more limited. Mark Warner has his own base in Virginia, as does Kerrey in Nebraska. Democratic takeover efforts in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Oregon, all Kerry-supporting states, probably won't be hurt by Sen. Clinton. She may or may not lower the odds for a takeover in Colorado, and she probably removes whatever slim chance the Democrats had for upsets in North Carolina, Kentucky and New Mexico. But they should still anticipate a good year in 2008, with a larger Senate majority--enough to kick Joe Lieberman out of the caucus. The question will be whether Harry Reid has a Democratic Speaker and President to work with.

Re-tethering War to the Public
Watching some of the testimony of Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus to the Senate this morning--and trying to swallow my disgust at this show having been scheduled for September 10-11--I was reminded again of how far most of us are from the real effects of this war. We're saddened by its toll and outraged by how it's been mismanaged, but it's still a theoretical exercise for the overwhelming majority of Americans.

As I've written here before, one reason this is so that it's just way too easy for this country to go to war. Presidents can commit forces with very little short-term political risk, and while the bill comes due eventually--as it did for the Republicans last November--by then it's difficult to disengage, even if you don't have an ill-informed narcissistic sociopath at the controls. From this premise, I've reluctantly come to the opinion, in the last two years, that we need to reimpose some kind of political check on decisionmakers' tendencies to start wars and commit forces.

This could take the form a draft, of course; Charlie Rangel among others has advanced this argument. And it's fairly compelling; no question that the prospect of sending everyday people to fight and die would seriously raise the bar for military intervention. But the objections of the professional military to reinstituting a draft--mostly that it would dilute the quality--are legitimate too.

So maybe there should be another mechanism--some kind of tax that goes into effect whenever a military commitment lasts longer than six months. At the least, this would require the public to pay for its wars rather than put them on the credit card, as we've done in this instance. And it would speed the day of political reckoning.

I don't think this would mean that the country could never act; the Afghanistan War enjoyed overwhelming support at the time, and probably still has majority support. I have little doubt that majorities would have sustained that support despite a tax surcharge. At least initially, the same might have held true for Iraq.

The larger point is that some structural change that would involve the whole country in any war effort would be very good for our democracy. It is proper that the Republicans paid a heavy political price for the war last year, and might do so again next year. But with a draft, or a war tax, or something that required fuller public engagement, the president would have had to do what McCain and others always wanted him to do: talk to the public honestly about the war, and make a persuasive case that our involvement is justified.

This notion of selling the public on a set of policies has disappeared under Bush. There's a great piece in this past Sunday's New York Times magazine about Jack Goldsmith, a conservative who resigned from the Bush Justice Department in 2004 over administration policy regarding torture, wiretapping, and related measures. He agreed with Bush, Cheney and the rest about the threat of terrorism and the need for "strong measures"; his issue mostly was that they attempted to get what they want through unilateral decisionmaking.

The story includes a line I found resonant: "the power of the presidency is the power to persuade." This was the key to the successful presidencies of, among others, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan, and Clinton: they could bring the country around to their views, and their policies enjoyed popular legitimacy.

This war in Iraq hasn't enjoyed popular legitimacy at least since 2004, and that lack arguably has been as damaging as the debt we've incurred and the human losses we've suffered.

The Technology's Great; the Content Stinks
What a time to be alive. It's Sunday afternoon, I'm sitting in Brooklyn, New York, I've got two computers on the desk in front of me. One is showing the Eagles game, one is showing the Phillies game. The picture is pretty good on the Eagles, perfect on the Phils.

Problem is that the Eagles look like a bad high school team, losing 10-0 after fumbling a punt recovered in the end zone and with three sad excuses for drives, and the Phillies... well, it's hard to have faith in a team that lost two games where they led by five runs or more within the last week.

Still, I'm here, and work isn't getting done. So it's clear who the real sucker is.

Why Petraeus is Not to be Trusted
At least not by Philadelphia baseball fans. Here's the General:



And here's former Phillies General Manager Ed Wade:



Wade ran the Phillies for eight years, with no playoff berths to show for it. Eventually he spent more and more money, at grievous opportunity cost, yet the team never got closer to its objective. Sound familiar?

But for those who don't have an irrational detestation of Ed Wade, there are other reasons not to trust the general either. Paul Krugman sums them up:

Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

Krugman also cites this powerful piece of reporting from the Washington Post on Thursday, by Karen DeYoung. She found that the statistical gains championed by defenders of "the surge" are very, very dubious. The statistics "selectively ignor[e]" certain trends (such as escalating violence between different Shi'ite militias) in making assessments, and generally stacking the deck in favor of the wished-for conclusions. (Again, sound familiar?) One number the defenders don't cite is the civilian death count for August: 1,809, the highest monthly total this year.

Like Krugman, however, I fear that Congress will make a political decision to sustain "the surge" and generally defer to the White House. In part, this is because the sight of an Army uniform clouds their judgment; in part, I think, it's because somehow in our society, when we have a choice between "more war" and "less war," the structural factors pointing toward "more war" are almost irresistible. But that might be another discussion for another time.

For now, just don't trust the guy who looks lilke Wade.

Bill Clinton's Empathy Has No Bounds
Maybe this is to be expected given Bubba's own scandal history. But I still thought this was kind of cool:

Bill Clinton will appear on Larry King Live tonight to peddle his latest book and his wife's presidential bid. However, his comment on the sex scandal surrounding Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) will likely grab more headlines.

From an advance transcript:

"Well, first of all, I think we ought to recognize that this is a very traumatic time for him and his family. And whatever happens or doesn't, most of his political career was behind him. So whatever your party, we should be hoping that he and his family can work through this in a way that leaves them as whole as possible.

"I think that that is more important than the politics of this. The politics of this will have to be resolved by him and the Republicans in the Senate.

It's a particularly nice grace note considering Craig's reaction at the time of BlowGate.

All that said, I suspect Clinton, that great political mind, knows that the longer the Craig fooferall lingers, the worse this month will be for the Republicans--particularly considering the intent of the Republicans to focus on other subjects.

The days of atonement
Karl Marx famously observed that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. That aphorism bubbled up from somewhere in my head this week, as the country marked the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans. It’s likely that history will remember the defining event of this decade as the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The destruction of the World Trade Center certainly had a near-incalculable impact on American foreign policy, the economy, civil liberties, and politics. It helped open the door to every disaster the Bush administration subsequently inflicted upon the country, from the PATRIOT Act to the embrace of torture as national policy to, most obviously, the Iraq War.

And yet I would argue that what Katrina did to New Orleans, not quite four years later—the farce of the government’s response following the tragedy of the hurricane, itself a nature-born echo of the manmade disaster that was 9/11--was not only far more devastating, but far more consequential to our age.

As I’ve written here before, I was less than a mile from the Twin Towers when they fell. I walked home that morning, with thousands of others, over the Brooklyn Bridge—but I had a home to walk back to. We weren’t able to get back into our office in Lower Manhattan for six days—but the office was still there when we finally could do so. The attack sent the NYC economy into a sharp, painful recession—but the city’s infrastructure didn’t suffer lasting damage, and the numbers show that few people left New York City in the aftermath. Physically, a very small piece of Manhattan was destroyed and the surrounding area was temporarily off-limits.

You just can’t compare that to what Katrina did to New Orleans. The death count—1,464 as of August 2006—was about half of the September 11 toll. But about 80 percent of the city suffered water damage, and approximately one million people fled the city and suburbs—only about two-thirds of whom have yet returned. The recovery continues, with a mix of good news and bad, though the process of reconstruction has been as ineffective and riddled with accusations of corruption as you’d expect from the guys who brought you Iraq: The Occupation and the crooks who are Louisiana’s entrenched political/business class.

But aside from periods like now, when the calendar reminds us, we haven’t really thought or talked that much about New Orleans since the disaster. Certainly the hoped-for national conversations my colleagues and I anticipated about the nature of poverty and the physical and social needs never have come to pass. We look away, nervous, a little ashamed, a little relieved that, after all, the blow fell somewhere else.

In the Jewish faith, the days between Rosh Hashanah, the start of the new year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, are known as the Ten Days of Repentance, a period when Jews are supposed to reflect on their own behavior and recommit to goodness in their lives. Perhaps we as Americans should view the thirteen days between the anniversary of the New Orleans levee breaking, August 29, and September 11, in a similar light. The shame of 9/11 is primarily on the government, first for failing to recognize and prevent the attack but also for the remorseless manner in which the Bush administration connived, and Congress acquiesced, to drive the country into an even deeper abyss. While the government bears some blame for the devastation of Katrina as well—both the pro-development policies that led to the erosion of wetlands that might have cushioned the blow, and the fatal incompetence that compromised rescue efforts and has crippled rebuilding—I think this one falls upon all of us. Once the benefit concert was over and the news cycle had moved on, we more or less accepted the ongoing agony of a great American city.

The Do-Something Dem Congress
In a summer of discontent, Republicans are buoyed by poll numbers showing that the 110th Congress, under Democratic control, has among the lowest approval ratings ever recorded. The most recent numbers indicate that as few as 18 percent of those polled approve of the job Congress is doing; disapproval is as high as 76 percent. On the one hand, this seems to threaten Democrats' prospects for retaining control next year; on the other, there's a rough consensus that the numbers are so bad not because voters want to reinstall the Republicans, but because Democratic voters themselves are fed up at the failure to end the war in Iraq and force major change in other areas of policy. Indeed, just 28 percent of Democrats in one recent poll expressed approval, compared to 59 percent disapproving.

But maybe that frustration--which I think extends all the way across our politics, and has its origins in the simple truth that everyone wants the atrociously bad Bush presidency just to be over--is misplaced. Congressional scholar Thomas Mann writes today that the 110th Congress, far from the do-nothing persona Republicans constantly allege, has accomplished a lot--particularly in comparison to 12 years ago, when a new Republican majority found itself in power but checked by a Democratic president:

[T]he Democratic Congress’s legislative harvest this year has been bountiful compared with that of its Republican counterpart in 1995. Back then, the Republicans’ Contract With America was stymied by opposition from the Senate and the president. The new Congress has enacted a far-reaching lobbying and ethics reform bill, an increase in the minimum wage, recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, foreign investment rules and a competitiveness package, and has embedded a number of major initiatives and new priorities in continuing and supplemental spending bills. Democrats also made headway on energy, children’s health insurance, college student loans, Head Start, drug safety and a farm bill — though much of this awaits action in the Senate or in conference and faces a possible veto.

During the first seven months of 1995, Congressional oversight of the executive branch increased modestly in the Senate but not at all in the House. But this year Congress, especially the House, has intensified its oversight, following years of inattention and deference by its Republican predecessor.

Mann backs up his case with this chart.

A couple things. First of all, I don't believe that public perception of Congress has more than a very tangential relationship to what, or how many, measures they pass or enact with the president's signature. I hardly remember the energy measure and the action on college student loans, and I don't remember anything on Head Start and drug safety--and I feel pretty confident that I follow this stuff more closely than most of the public. On the other hand, I certainly remember the failures of the immigration bill and the various measures to de-escalate or stop the war, and the Democrats' disgraceful capitulation on wiretapping that essentially invalidated the Fourth Amendment. To be honest, I don't approve of the Congress's performance either.

But the second point is maybe more important: the frustrations shared by Democrats both professional and amateur are part and parcel of the system. It's not supposed to be easy to change policy. You can have a rabidly partisan, arguably sociopathic president, a minority more interested in embarrassing the other side than passing laws, outside pressure groups subtle (the insurance lobby pushing Bush to veto S-CHIP expansion) and gross (millions of enraged talk-radio callers and Lou Dobbs viewers fingering their guns in anticipation of a Mexican invasion). The only time it's ever even sort of easy is when there's a disaster--the Depression, JFK's assassination, 9/11--that either discredits or mutes the opposition.

The Democrats are somewhat in a dilemma here, because they won't get more popular until they win some more political fights, but obviously it will be more difficult to win those fights with 18 percent approval than a clear expression of support from the country. It's now more clear than ever that 2006 was the year of Republican collapse; unless the Dems figure out how to win on a positive agenda, with their own candidates, their ascendency will be short-lived and the history of the 110th Congress will be written by those who overthrew it.

Michael Vick
So long, dickhead. I don't have much to add on this one, other than utter bafflement how someone could engage in dog fighting when he was already a millionaire. (Don't get me wrong: I think it's evil and wrong in any context. But for whatever reason it becomes a little more comprehensible if the people involved are poor and desperate. Vick freakin' bankrolled the ring. He must have gotten entertainment from this.)

Anyway, he's going to spend a year in jail, and the NFL has suspended him without pay--not for the dog fighting, as you'd think, but for the gambling aspect. I guess I get it--it's probably a legalistic approach like busting Al Capone on tax evasion, and accomplishes the same end. But it still feels weird, like the army punishing the killers of civilians ostensibly because they disobeyed the dress code.

Random thought: if you knew the right sports book to contact, could you get action on whether Vick embraces Christianity or Islam while he's on the inside?

Who's the Bobby?
John Edwards clearly has concluded that his presidential chances rest on drawing the sharpest possible contrast with Hillary Clinton and the Establishment policies and politics she represents. In a speech today, Edwards went on the attack:

[S]mall thinking and outdated answers aren't the only problems with a vision for the future that is rooted in nostalgia. The trouble with nostalgia is that you tend to remember what you liked and forget what you didn't. It's not just that the answers of the past aren't up to the job today, it's that the system that produced them was corrupt -- and still is. It's controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it's perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don't stand a chance.
...
Politicians who care more about their careers than their constituents go along to get elected. They make easy promises to voters instead of challenging them to take responsibility for our country. And then they compromise even those promises to keep the lobbyists happy and the contributions coming.
...
The choice for our party could not be more clear. We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other.
...
But cleaning up Washington isn't enough. If we are going to meet the challenges we face and prevail over them, two principles must guide us -- yes, we must end the Washington game, but we must also think as big as the challenges we face. Our ideas must be bold enough to succeed and our government must be free to enact them without compromising principle or sacrificing results.

One without the other isn't good enough. All the big ideas in the world won't make a difference if they have to go through this broken system that remains controlled by big business and their lobbyists. And if we fix the system, but aren't honest with the American people about the scope of our challenges and what's required of each of us to meet them, then we'll be left with the baby steps and incremental measures that are Washington's poor excuse for progress.

As Bobby Kennedy said, "If we fail to dare, if we do not try, the next generation will harvest the fruit of our indifference; a world we did not want, a world we did not choose, but a world we could have made better by caring more for the results of our labors."

But if we do both -- if we have the courage to offer real change and the determination to change Washington -- then we will be build the One America we dream of, where every man, woman and child is blessed with the same, great opportunity and held to the same, just rules.

I substantially agree with the Edwards critique of "corporate Democrats," though I recoil somewhat at the possibility of overdoing it; after all, we want corporations tamed, not destroyed; their wealth-making powers more equitably shared, not curtailed; their influence (which protects that wealth-making capacity) checked by other considerations, not eliminated entirely.

While this attack has merit, though, it's also fairly predicable and represents not just a rhetorical shot across the Clinton bow, but a new determination on the part of Edwards to seize the mantle of Idealist/Reformer/Not-Hillary from Barack Obama, who's trying to win that title through a much less overtly confrontational campaign approach. The model for both men is Robert Kennedy; Edwards, who quotes Kennedy in the speech, is going after RFK's speaking-truth-to-power cred, while Obama is focusing on the hope that Bobby inspired in millions of Americans, black and white, rich and poor, young and old.

I've written about the tricky nature of the RFK legacy before, but it's worth considering another aspect of the legend for the purposes of the 2008 campaign. RFK rose to his mythical stature through martyrdom, but his prominence as a national figure--the reason he became such a factor in the 1968 race--initially came because he was the brother of another martyr, President John F. Kennedy. Were it not for the emotional resonance he created by looking and sounding so much like the late and much-loved JFK, Bobby's stinging critiques of structural racism and economic injustice (not to mention the Vietnam War, for which he was present at the creation and bore a special obligation of penitence) would not have gotten nearly as wide a hearing.

In other words, he had to be a celebrity before he could become a prophet. And the wellspring of his celebrity was his status as the late president's brother.

Of course, Bill Clinton isn't a martyr to anything but his own bad judgment and, perhaps, the irrational Puritanism of Ken Starr and the self-aggrandizement and hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich. But he still confers a reflected glow upon his wife--and just as support for RFK was based in no small part upon nostalgia for the too-short Kennedy Administration, Hillary Clinton's backing comes in significant part from the public's fond memories of her husband's two terms (which, compared to what followed, really do look like a golden age).

RFK's celebrity gave him a pedastal from which to launch his critiques of American society and his pledges to create a government that would act in greater alignment with our highest principles. The critiques of Edwards and Obama might be no less powerful, but they don't have the platform. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, does have the platform... but she isn't using it to say much of consequence. Sadly, I think the size of the megaphone will trump the quality of the message, and she will be the nominee.

Bon Chance, Trot
In a shocking move, the Philadelphia Eagles today released one of their signature players: middle linebacker Jeremiah Trotter. Trotter is a four-time Pro Bowler who is, for the most part, 30 years old; the problem is that his knees have the mileage of a guy fifteen or twenty years older. That accelerated decrepitude is why the Eagles concluded he could no longer stop the run well enough to make up for being a major liability in passing situations.

Football is a brutal game in more ways than the action on the field, and nothing is rougher than cutting a veteran and team leader. But this parting was handled with probably as much class as possible by both sides. The Eagles made the move early enough to ensure that Trotter, who doesn't want to retire, can try and catch on elsewhere, and Trotter himself came out to practice today for a press conference and in-person farewell to his teammates.

Trotter addressed the team, telling his former teammates to savor each opportunity on the field, each moment with the team, then essentially passed the middle linebacker torch to the young Omar Gaither and hugged each of his former teammates. There was Brian Dawkins, who had seen every minute of Trotter's career here. There was Spikes, who had joined the Eagles in March and been outspoken about his desire to play with Trotter. And there were coaches.

When the linebackers huddled, as they usually do after practice, Trotter was in the middle. He broke the huddle for the last time, walked to the auditorium with Dawkins and Spikes at his side, then fought back tears as he talked about the green blood coursing through his veins.

When Reid summoned Trotter to his office after Monday's practice, Trotter had no idea what was about to happen. He said he was stunned by the news, but sounded neither bitter nor remorseful.

"It was pretty emotional," Trotter said of his meeting with Reid. "At the end, we were like two old ladies up there. Obviously, I know he didn't want to make the decision. But as a head coach, you have to make tough decisions for the organization, and I respected it. I just told him I really appreciated everything he did for me, the organization, and the city.

"It's a tough pill to swallow, but everyone gets to this point in their career at some point or another, and now is my time. I'm just thankful that I spent this many years here in Philadelphia. I truly believe that if you were to cut me, I'd bleed green. Even when I went away for two years [to Washington], I was always an Eagle at heart, and I'll always remain an Eagle."

The Eagles have had a lot of these over the past few years, cutting loose beloved vets like defensive end Hugh Douglas, running back Duce Staley and cornerbacks Troy Vincent and Bobby Taylor. Every time, fans have howled; thus far, every time, the move has been borne out by the results. In the salary-cap era, the surest way for an NFL team to fade from contender to also-ran is to do what baseball teams routinely do: overpay for past performance. If the Eagles--who have been down this road before with Trotter, having essentially cut him after a contract dispute before the 2002 season before bringing him back as a reserve two years later--think he's done, he's probably done. Unlike the Phillies, they've earned the benefit of the doubt.

But it's still sad. Trotter and safety Brian Dawkins are the last two players left from the wreckage of the pre-Andy Reid era, and they blossomed into stars (in Dawkins's case, a probable Hall of Famer) as the team returned to prominence. In Trotter's case, a kid from rural Texas--growing up in fairly close proximity to the detested Cowboys--made himself a Philadelphia legend with his signature "Axe Man" celebration and endless intensity and energy. He'll be missed, to say the least.

Why I Sort of Hate the Clintons
Here's a fun game: go to Google (that's a beer you owe me, Greg), and type in Hillary Clinton "strength and experience". Or, what the hell, just click here.

You'll find that almost every time one of the Clintonistas speaks, especially if it's about Barack Obama (the latest example of which finally set me off on this rant--but more about the O-man anon), this same phrase is employed: "Senator Clinton has the strength and experience to..." The end of the sentence really doesn't matter: ensure a bumper corn crop? Fly through the air? Reverse the earth's orbit in its course?

This is what political pundits are talking about when they prattle on about "message discipline." It's another manifestation of the single worst phenomenon of 21st century American politics: those awful fucking backdrops that have the same three- or four- word phrase written over and over and over again. "Securing Our Borders." "Fixing Health Care." "Defending the Homeland." Gerund, object; now and forever; world without end.

It does help in winning news cycles, thanks in part to the ever-declining budgets of the big news operations and the short attention spans of journalists and the public alike. But it dumbs down our politics, and I suspect it contributes to the elevation of bad leaders. Bush was, for the most part, fantastic at message discipline; presumably it helped that he was too slow-witted to improvise and extrapolate, but he also probably applied the (very real) skill sets that helped him to stop drinking and stay in very good shape for a guy in his 60s.

Bill Clinton, famously undisciplined in his personal life and not known for running a very tight political ship through most of his career, got very good at message discipline in his 1996 re-election campaign. It's probably not a coincidence that Sen. Clinton's operation has the same look and feel (probably meaningless Freudian slip: I initially typed "look and fear") as that campaign. This is one of the many reasons I think she's going to win the nomination, and I admit it will serve her well against the eminently rattle-able Rudy Giuliani, if he makes it to the general election. But, as George W. Bush proved, the ability to stay on-message has little to no connection to the talents a successful president needs.

...and Hastert Deflates Into Nothingness
There's something fitting about the announcement of former SINO (Speaker in Name Only) Dennis Hastert that he won't seek re-election next year coming just a day and a half after the news that Karl Rove will leave his White House job at the end of this month. Hastert, the wholly owned and operated creature of former Republican kingpin Tom DeLay, was the bland and relatively unthreatening face of the vicious pseudo-conservatism Rove and DeLay masterminded. But while they earned the glory for winning elections, Hastert became the bloated face of Republicans' failure to actually govern in an effective and ethical fashion.

Ultimately, it seems Hastert could not stand on his own without the support of DeLay's arm so far up his fat ass. Good riddance.

Karl Rove Slithers Away
I was waiting at baggage claim at JFK yesterday afternoon when read on the CNN crawl that Karl Rove was leaving his White House job at the end of the month. After dismissing my obvious initial reaction--elation that he was fleeing an indictment--as irrationally optimistic, I just tried to shut up my interior narrative and read the blurbs on the screen. The only one that pissed me off was the sentiment that Rove had rendered great service to "the American people." Loyal friend of the president? Fine. Renowned strategist? Okay. Genius? I'm doubtful, but it can be argued.

What's intolerable is the notion that this purely political creature "served" anyone or anything other than the Republican Party and George W. Bush. For me and tens of millions like me, Karl Rove was nothing but an enemy; his goal was to marginalize us as completely as possible from having a voice in the affairs of our own country.

Perhaps strangely, the best take I've read by far of Rove's achievements and legacy comes from another Loyal Bushie: former speechwriter and current right-wing columnist David Frum, writing in the New York Times this morning:

AS a political strategist, Karl Rove offered a brilliant answer to the wrong question.

The question he answered so successfully was a political one: How could Republicans win elections after Bill Clinton steered the Democrats to the center?

The question he unfortunately ignored was a policy question: What does the nation need — and how can conservatives achieve it?

Mr. Rove answered his chosen question by courting carefully selected constituencies with poll-tested promises: tax cuts for traditional conservatives; the No Child Left Behind law for suburban moderates; prescription drugs for anxious seniors; open immigration for Hispanics; faith-based programs for evangelicals and Catholics.

These programs often contradicted each other. How do you cut taxes and also create a big new prescription drug benefit? If the schools are failing to educate the nation’s poor, how does it make sense to expand that population by opening the door to even more low-wage immigration?

Instead of seeking solutions to national problems, “compassionate conservatism” started with slogans and went searching for problems to justify them. To what problem, exactly, was the faith-based initiative a solution?

This was a politics of party-building and coalition-assembly. It was a politics that aimed at winning elections. It was a politics that treated the problems of governance as secondary. But of course governance is what incumbents get judged on — and since 2004, the negative verdict on President Bush’s governance has created a lethal political environment for Republican candidates.
...
Building coalitions is essential to political success. But it is not the same thing as political success. The point of politics is to elect governments, and political organizations are ultimately judged by the quality of government they deliver. Paradoxically, the antigovernment conservatives of the 1980s took the problems of government far more seriously than the pro-government conservatives of the 2000s.

Also in the Times, Joshua Green--an observer considerably less sympathetic to Rove's goals than Frum--observes that the man known as "Turd Blossom" ironically repeated some of the mis-steps of those 1960s liberals he so hated. And Rick Perlstein on Tompaine.com wonders if Rove's change of address just means that he'll be operating with a somewhat freer hand, doing the same odious things for his odious patron.

Let's hope not. Rove's epitaph for our politics could be, as the sisters Bouvier once had engraved for Homer Simpson, "We are richer for having lost him."

News of the Weird and Sad
I'm out of town for a week starting in a couple hours, but this story of Bob Allen, the family-values Florida state representative who offered to fellate an undercover cop, is too good not to notice. First, Rep. Allen's version:

Allen has already denied any wrongdoing, but the recordings and documents offered new details about what he and police say happened on July 11 inside the men's room at Veterans Memorial Park.

"I certainly wasn't there to have sex with anybody and certainly wasn't there to exchange money for it," said Allen, R-Merritt Island, who was arrested on charges of soliciting prostitution.

"This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park," Allen, who is white, told police in a taped statement after his arrest. Allen said he feared he "was about to be a statistic" and would have said anything just to get away.

Allen, who couldn't be reached for comment Thursday, has repeatedly declared his innocence, his intention to fight the charges and his desire to stay in office.

Gotta love the appeal to ignorant white fear. And now the officer's version:

In a written statement released Thursday, Titusville Officer Danny Kavanaugh recalled entering the restroom twice and said he was drying his hands in a stall when Allen peered over the stall door.

After peering over the stall a second time, Allen pushed open the door and joined Kavanaugh inside, the officer wrote. Allen muttered " 'hi,' " and then said, " 'this is kind of a public place, isn't it,' " the report said.

The officer said he asked Allen about going somewhere else and that the legislator suggested going "across the bridge, it's quieter over there."

"Well look, man, I'm trying to make some money; you think you can hook me up with 20 bucks?" Kavanaugh asked Allen.

The officer said Allen responded, "Sure, I can do that, but this place is too public."

Then Kavanaugh said he told Allen, "I wanna know what I gotta do for 20 bucks before we leave.' " He said Allen replied: "I don't know what you're into."

According to Kavanaugh's statement, the officer said, "do you want just [oral sex]?" and Allen replied, "I was thinking you would want one."

The officer said he then asked Allen, "but you'll still give me the 20 bucks for that . . . and that the legislator said, "yeah, I wouldn't argue with that."

As Allen turned and motioned for the officer to follow him to his car, Kavanaugh identified himself as a police officer by raising his shirt and exposing his badge.

The South Park episode pretty much writes itself, doesn't it?

Demented America
How about this one:

The Club For Growth is targeting Mike Huckabee in the run-up to the Ames straw poll next weekend, clearly hoping to blunt any appeal he might have with state's religious right GOP base. This TV ad, with a buy costing a total of $85,000, attacks Huckabee for raising various taxes when he was governor of Arkansas, tax hikes that Huckabee has said were necessary to improve the state's ragged infrastructure.

Their ad went up today. Is it obliviousness or shamelessness that these vicious, greedy fuckers renew their anti-tax jihad as rescuers are still trying to save the victims of a bridge collapse in Minneapolis--the perfect example of what happens when you neglect the public's infrastructure?

Huckabee's obviously wrong about a great many things. But if he has the gumption to tell off Pat Toohey and his collection of sociopaths--to invite them to drown themselves in Grover Norquist's bathtub--I'm sending him money.

On the "Democratic" side, more madness from our would-be Kinder, Gentler Empress:

The ongoing Hillary-Obama skirmish has flared up into a major firefight this afternoon, with Clinton chiding Obama at a press conference for ruling out the use of nukes against terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Earlier today Obama was asked by the Associated Press whether he'd consider using nukes against terrorists in Afghanistan or Pakistan. His answer was No:

"I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance," Obama said, with a pause, "involving civilians." Then he quickly added, "Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table."

Hillary has now responded by chiding Obama for ruling out the use of nukes. Here's what she said today at a press conference, according to a transcript provided by the Senator's office:

"I think that presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or non-use of nuclear weapons. Presidents, since the Cold War, have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons."

You're fucking kidding me. Right?

How sick have we become as a society when our most likely next president is publicly countenancing the use of nuclear weapons--the same instruments of death and havoc that we are endlessly willing to go to war to stop others from acquiring--against a bunch of thugs in caves?

I took a lot of classes in college about the Cold War, deterrence theory, all that stuff. I understand the thinking. But... this is beyond irrational. It's one thing to deter aggression from a hostile, nuclear-armed power; it's quite another even to hold open the possibility that you would irradiate an entire region--killing who knows how many people who have nothing to do with whatever it is you're trying to stop--just to score political points.

It's times like this I'm glad I'm agnostic. Because if I were a person of faith, I'd be worried in the extreme about the wrath of a just God.

A Hat Tip for Hillary
Obviously, I'm not a fan... but you have to admire this.

Few political fundraising e-mails have ever carried the subject header “cleavage,” but White House hopeful Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign sent a solicitation to supporters Friday with the attention-grabbing header in order to decry a recent Washington Post article devoted to the New York Democrat’s chest — and raise campaign cash in the process.

“Frankly, focusing on women’s bodies instead of their ideas is insulting,” Ann Lewis, a senior adviser to Clinton, wrote in the e-mail. “It’s insulting to every woman who has ever tried to be taken seriously in a business meeting. It’s insulting to our daughters — and our sons — who are constantly pressured by the media to grow up too fast.”

“Take a stand against this kind of coarseness and pettiness in American culture,” Lewis adds, with a link to make a contribution to the campaign. “And take a stand for Hillary, the most experienced, most qualified candidate running for president.”

"Brilliant" actually might not be a strong enough compliment here. One of Sen. Clinton's enduring problems in trying to win the Democratic nomination is that she actually does much better among working-class and less educated women than with academic high-achievers and extremely accomplished professional women like herself.

But one experience common to probably every single woman who could be thus described is being objectified in a professional context, and getting pissed off about it. Thanks to the vapid Washington Post article, Sen. Clinton now has a shared experience, and an emotionally resonant one at that, with "every woman who has ever tried to be taken seriously in a business meeting."

These people really do play the game of politics at a much higher level. I'm rooting against them, but the strategery is masterful.

Is Sen. Clinton "Bush-Cheney Lite"?
So says, or at least implies, Barack Obama:

"The Bush administration's policy is to say that he will not talk with these countries unless they meet various preconditions -- that's their explicit policy, and that was the question that was posed at the debate. This is the assertion that she made during the debate and subsequently, was that she would not meet with various leaders unless certain preconditions were met. Now, if that's not what she means, then she should say so, but that was the question that was posed at the debate."

Obama also said: “I’m not afraid of losing the PR war to dictators...I’m not going to hide behind a bunch of rhetoric. I don’t want a continuation with Bush-Cheney. I don’t want Bush-Cheney light. I want a fundamental change.”

What specifically prompted this is a rather insubstantial argument about "talking to America's enemies," in which Obama endorsed diplomatic talks without conditions and Clinton quickly smacked him for "naivete." In reality, both are probably in the same place: more willing to engage in diplomacy than the Bush administration, but hardly prepared to offer tea and sympathy to the worst regimes in the world.

In a larger sense, though, I believe Hillary Clinton *does* represent what we could call "Bush/Cheney Lite." To be fair, I'm not so sure it's different from the stance Bill Clinton took during his two terms, or how Al Gore would have approached the world had he been allowed to claim his victory in 2000. But the stakes of this approach are higher now, and its risks are commensurately greater.

First, the disclaimer. Though I'm clearly not a Hillary fan, I have no doubt that her administration would conduct foreign policy at a level of competence and thoughtfulness light years beyond what the current crop of goons, dimwits and sociopaths have wrought. But Sen. Clinton offers no challenge to the increasingly problematic foundational premises of American foreign policy:

1) Our unmatched power essentially gives us the right to do what we want, when we want

2) We should not be held responsible for our own past actions, and they bear no relation to what goes on now (e.g. Iranian distrust of U.S. actions and intentions is in no way justified by the fact that we staged a coup in their country more than 50 years ago, replacing a democratically elected government with a repressive tyrant)

3) Nobody worries about the larger budgetary and systemic (as in the ramifications for our democracy at home) consequences of our de facto empire except some weenie academics and losers who hang out on the Internets

It probably can be argued that the only candidate in the race on either side who's even thinking about these issues is the renegade Republican/Libertarian Ron Paul. And, of course, he's a nut on myriad other grounds. But I have vastly more faith that Obama at least might grapple with these issues than that Hillary Clinton--the chosen candidate of the Establishment, the most likely to embrace the Bush/Cheney vision of Executive Superpowers, and the Senator who didn't even bother to read the intel on Iraq because she'd made up her mind to cast the "right" political vote--ever will. If you think it's important to even question the premises of how we work in the world, you shouldn't be supporting Clinton.

Relative Quietude
I've been having trouble motivating myself to post all that much lately. The reason why isn't that I've not been paying attention to things, or that I don't think anything important is going on... but rather a sense, always there but stronger at some times than others, that things have quietly gone so far out of control that as a society, and as a nation, we're left only to see how long we can continue to coast on past accomplishments. I got myself terribly depressed this past Friday after reading about the Bush administration's unfathomable argument that whenever it claimed "executive privilege," it essentially could end any investigation, any oversight, any check on the powers the president and his Loyal Bushies have so egregiously misused by ordering the Justice Department not to pursue contempt charges from Congress.

The outrage over this absurdity has been pretty much nonexistant, at least beyond the circles where people are paid to be outraged by what the Other Party is up to. Maybe it will ramp up somewhat, after the farcically inept and dishonest Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez issued another series of unambiguous "fuck you" answers to Congress yesterday and the House Judiciary Committee approved contempt citations for two of the Most Loyal Bushies, Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers, on a party-line vote today. Maybe not. I'd guess not. But the mere fact that this was a party-line vote--that not one Republican put the prerogatives of their institution, and the Constitution, ahead of their party and their widely despised Leader--is much more depressing still.

I hate the idea of reflexive partisanship. Everything I read into American history, as well as my own life experience, pushes me to reject the notion that one side ever has all the answers. But at this point I struggle to see even the least bit of good in the modern Republican Party. What do these people care about? It comes out today that not only Bush, but his enablers in Congress, are now prepared to reject the idea of expanding the State Child Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), which helps provide health coverage for low-income children. Why? Because it "goes against their philosophy," which I guess is "free-market fundamentalism, except when we have a donor constituency to protect."

I suspect the reason for this is nothing more and nothing less than not wanting to give the Democrats a political success. And to me, this is a perfect issue for the Democrats, with a far greater command on the public's attention now that they have congressional majorities and high-profile presidential candidates, to demagogue. But this is not something they've been particularly good at.

How can we solve any of the great problems of this time when we can't even agree that the health of kids is more important than little political pissing contests? Or that preserving and defending the Constitution is a nobler cause than Party Uber Alles?

Now I've gone and upset myself again. So you see why I'm having trouble writing about these things.

Sympathy for Two Devils
I did something unpleasant last night: put on an Atlanta Braves game on TBS. Aside from the Dallas Cowboys ("or, NAMBLA"), there's no franchise in pro sports I hate like the Braves. From the all-American adulterer Larry Jones, Jr. to John "I hates the gays and loves the Baby Jesus" Smoltz and Bobby "wife-beating drunk" Cox, and especially the tortured-Muppet announcer Skip Carey--who mercifully wasn't on the broadcast last night--I just detest the Braves. And while I didn't stay up late enough to get this particular dash of salt in the wound, they doubly screwed me last night as two fantasy pitchers of mine, Tim Hudson and Bob Wickman, squandered a 4-0 lead, and a win and a save, in the 9th inning last night. Had the Braves ultimately lost the game, the benefit to the Phillies would have rendered this acceptable--but they won in 13. No soup for me.

But this isn't really about the Braves per se. As they were playing in San Francisco (one more side note: evidently my political leanings are strong enough that whenever a sports team representing a clearly liberal city plays one representing a right-wingish area, unless there are very strong offsetting circumstances, I'll want the Blue team to win; this is pretty much the strongest rooting interest I have in for the NHL and NBA at this point...) whoever was announcing the game started talking about Barry Bonds' pursuit of Hank Aaron's home run record and the decision of MLB Commissioner Bud Selig to try to be in attendance when Bonds hits #756. Per the Braves announcers, when Selig was asked whether he thought Bonds would be legitimate as the record-holder despite all the performance-enhancement allegations that have dogged him for some years now, Selig answered to the effect that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Good enough, but then he added, "For me, it's difficult to put aside my personal feelings."

Selig reveres Hank Aaron, so I guess that's understandable, but it seems to me that after 15 (mostly painful) years in the job, he should know when to keep his frickin' mouth shut. Even considering that Bonds is a jerk, and that he almost certainly did take PEDs, to put that on him now is, I think, really piling on. Given the current level of scrutiny, if he took drugs last season, or is doing so this year, he shouldn't be playing baseball; he should be running the CIA. Yet at age 42/43 this year, he's got 19 home runs and an OPS well over 1.000; last year he hit 26 bombs in 367 at-bats with an OPS of .999. That's probably the best offensive performance at that age in baseball history, and it's almost certain that he did it clean.

So much for Bonds. For Selig's part, I can see not wanting to absolutely commit to being in attendance. It's not like when Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games played record: you could look at the schedule and see the date when it would happen. With Bonds, who knows? He generally sits out two days a week, but is likely to pinch-hit in those games. He's been in a terrible slump lately; maybe he comes out of it and ties the record in a flurry with a two-homer outburst, like he had last week in Chicago. Selig, ineffectual jerk that he is, is also going to turn 73 years old next week, and he has a day job. Having him go Deadhead following Bonds around for two weeks or three weeks or a month is neither feasible nor, in a sense, fair to Selig.

Now I gotta go bathe.

Bread and Circus
On the way home from the gym last night, I read what struck me as a pretty important "think piece" in Democracy Journal: "America's Teaching Crisis." The article pithily details one of the biggest problems in public education: how we recruit, train and compensate our teachers. It makes a crucially important and uncontestable point that, frankly, I'm a little embarrassed I hadn't thought of previously: through the 1970s, teaching (like nursing, where I was aware of this factor) had a big competitive human capital advantage just by the fact that the full range of career options weren't open to women and, to a somewhat lesser extent, non-white men, so people of talent and ambition were more likely to go into the field. Because of this advantage, there was less need to aggressively recruit or robustly compensate great educators.

(My mom was one of those people. Had she been born even 15 years later, I think she would have gone into the law or academia; as it was, she became a teacher. It was her students' gain, but similarly talented people are now far less likely to enter the profession.)

I don't know if it's possible to show that aggregate teacher quality has declined in recent decades, but at the least, the article suggests that today's teaching workforce is not replete with the sort of inspirational, mind-opening instructors we all wish for:

If the principal objective of a teacher-preparation program is to develop highly effective educators, then it ought to select its students with attention to the characteristics that correlate with effectiveness in the classroom. One such broadly recognized characteristic is the level of a prospective teacher’s "literacy"–not merely an individual’s ability to read, but rather one’s "world knowledge," general academic proficiency, and ability to communicate. To be sure, this broadly defined literacy does not, by itself, guarantee effective teaching, but it is, on average, very much related to success in the classroom. Multiple studies examining different proxies for literacy have shown that educators who are considered "highly literate" consistently produce student achievement that outpaces that of their "less literate" peers, sometimes by more than a third of a grade level per year. One study of Philadelphia students suggests that this effect may be greatest for low-income and minority students. Summarizing the evidence, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), of which we are both members, reports that, "clearly a prospective teacher’s level of literacy, however measured, should be a primary consideration in the hiring process."

Despite this evidence, many schools of education do not select their students with an aggressive eye toward this broadly defined literacy. For example, one study of the graduates of the State University of New York system found that, on standardized aptitude tests, elementary and secondary teachers were more likely to score on the lower end of the distribution than their non-teaching peers, and less likely to score at the higher end. National data reflect the same trends: Fewer than 7 percent of public school teachers, for instance, graduated from "selective" colleges. Of course, test scores and college selectivity are not the only indicators of effective teaching; a range of factors leads to excellence in the classroom. However, research suggests that there is a real connection between effectiveness in the classroom and "literacy" that could be more fully addressed in how current teacher preparation programs select candidates.

I suspect that part of this is bound up in the problem that so many of the "best and brightest" teachers leave in frustration after a couple years on the job. The attrition rate for NYC schoolteachers is something like 50 percent within their first three years, and many of those who don't leave the profession entirely relocate out of higher-stress assignments with lower-achieving kids and inadequate resources to easier and better-paid postings in the suburbs. It is hardly an overstatement to say that the needier the students, the worse teachers they are likely to have.

My personal conceit about how to reform the teaching profession has been that it needs to become a true "profession," with high standards for entry and competence and lucrative compensation like medicine or the law. The article, however, swats aside this premise and offers a different prescription:

Some commonly proposed ideas to improve the quality of teaching in our schools are well intentioned, but untenable when scaled to the enormity of the challenge. Substantial across-the-board raises for teachers, for example, make great political rhetoric but would require extraordinary tax increases that the public is unlikely to accept. Moreover, across-the-board raises will not create the right incentives to bring high-quality people to work in the districts and to teach the subjects that need them the most.

Similarly, the notion of making education more like law or medicine–with a large body of canonical knowledge for all practitioners and the expectations of a lifetime career–makes for great talking points but ignores key differences between these professions. What’s more, many talented young people today are not looking for static careers spanning 30 years in a singular profession. The labor market is more mobile and dynamic than it was a generation ago, and public schools should embrace and exploit this trend in a search for talent, rather than resist it.

Instead, the nation needs a New Deal for teachers and the nation’s school children. Such an effort would involve more (and smarter) pay, better training and support, and increased opportunities for professional growth. It would also allow more people to come into education at different points in their careers, and it would structure the incentives to more effectively promote the goals of student achievement and educational equity. It would also involve more responsibility–namely more accountability for job performance in the service of our children.

It goes on to urge "raising the bar" for admission into the profession, which I think is a needed step but might not work unless the rewards rise ahead of professional expectations. A better recommendation is to develop a "market-based" system for teachers to pursue their own professional development, arming them with vouchers to get higher education institutions to compete for their business. Done right, this could lower turnover and boost teacher quality. Finally, the authors urge significant change in how teachers are evaluated and, ultimately, compensated. This strikes me as a nearly uncontestable point.

Public education is the foundation stone of both American democracy and American economic competitiveness. With the arguable exception of climate change, there's no issue that's more important for our national well-being over the long term. The ideas raised in this piece are serious and worthy of an extended "national conversation" involving not just politicians and experts (or even policy wonks who focus in other areas but find this stuff really compelling), but parents and students--particularly those stuck in failing schools and floundering districts.

Instead, though, we've got coverage of David Vitter and his ho (or ho's); the media's ongoing John McCain Political Deathwatch; and on and on it goes.

I don't know how to make "issues" interesting to the general public. But until someone figures this out, we're going to be forever watching parades pass by while the neighborhood burns down.

The Authenticity Paradox
Sunday morning I was up in time to watch Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) do verbal battle with Republican Lindsay Graham of South Carolina on the Tim Russert show. As is his wont, Webb was unscripted, unrehearsed, and devastating; as Graham tossed out one meticulously crafted talking point after another, Webb tore apart each of them. Carpetbagger has some highlights:

GRAHAM: Have you been to Iraq and — have you been to Iraq and talked to the soldiers?

WEBB: You know, you haven’t been to Iraq.

GRAHAM: I’ve been to — I’ve been there seven times.

WEBB: You know, you go see the dog and pony shows.

GRAHAM: I’ve been there as a reservist, I have been there and I’m going back in August.

WEBB: That’s what congressmen do. Yeah, I have, I have — I’ve been a member of the military when the senators come in.

GRAHAM: Well, all — listen, something we can agree on, we both admire the men and women in uniform. I don’t doubt your patriotism.

WEBB: Don’t put political words in their mouth.

I was so excited to see Webb defeat George "Felix Macacawitz" Allen last year not just because Allen is a snivelling racist shitbag, but because Webb is the sort of guy who can change perceptions of Democrats. A former Reagan administration official who voted for Bush--and Allen--in 2000, Webb left the Democrats over cultural and foreign policy issues during the 1970s after fighting in Vietnam, and came back thirty years later after realizing that his objections to Republican abuses of the military and idiocy on the world stage trumped those differences. (For his part, Webb also has pushed back on some social issues--gun control, which he vehemently opposes, in particular--and tried to pull the Democrats further to the left on economic issues, where he never felt comfortable with the Republicans. Elected to the Senate with other economic populists like Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey and Jon Tester, he seems to be having some impact in this area.)

As a decorated military veteran whose son is on the ground in Iraq, a novelist and journalist who has written extensively about war and fighting, and former high official (Secretary of the Navy under Reagan) in the defense hierarchy, Webb probably has more credibility on issues of war and peace than any other Democrat. As a political giant-slayer--a year ago, most figured that by now Allen would be a leading presidential candidate after easily winning re-election--who won in a state that's gone Republican in ten straight presidential elections--he seems a natural for vice-presidential consideration next year, regardless of whom the Democrats nominate for the top job.

But I can't see it happening.

The reason why I doubt Webb will be on the ticket is the same reason I think he'd be so good: he doesn't take direction. Webb refuses to muzzle himself in support of the Party Line. When he gave the Democratic response to Bush's state of the union speech in January, he was given a speech by party hacks; he threw it out in favor of his own, and got more positive press than any response address in memory. If he had any doubts that he was smarter than the established DC crowd--and I don't think he did--that experience surely erased them.

Perhaps the most interesting thing Webb said on Russert’s show yesterday was when he pushed back against Graham’s apologetics for “the surge.” Graham was talking about how the military had “taken back” Anbar Province because the population there had been won over by Petreus; Webb countered that what had happened was the population exacting “redneck justice” against al Qaeda in Iraq, which would have happened whether or not the Americans were present in force. Everything we know about Webb indicates that he’s not unsympathetic to notions like “redneck justice.” I believe that such a view probably resonates with the American electorate. But can you imagine Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisors taking on a guy who dares to voice such uncouth thoughts? David Broder might get upset!

I suspect that if you polled the public on which candidates were most and least "authentic," Hillary Clinton would come out at the bottom. Fairly or not (and I'd argue it's more fair than not), she is regarded as supremely scripted, endlessly packaged. Webb is not; watching him on Russert's show yesterday, he seemed sufficiently upset that I was actually a little worried he was just going to kick Graham's ass on national live TV.

But while we as a country crave authenticity--the perception of it is why the painfully unqualified Bush was close enough to Al Gore in 2000 to steal the presidency--the parties crave message discipline and predictability. Given the choice between a likely winner they couldn't control and a more dubious candidate who could be relied upon to stay on message, the professional class of politicals will take the latter. (John McCain, in his much more appealing "maverick" incarnation, would have crushed Gore in 2000.)

Given his perception and potential to make Clinton acceptable to some chunk of the 50 percent of the country that claims to hate her, Webb makes so much sense politically as Hillary’s running mate that maybe they’ll ask him anyway, and just sweat through the days waiting for him to say something that upsets their delicate stomachs. But I doubt it (and I doubt he’d accept second billing on a Clinton-headed ticket). They'd worry, with much justification, that the authentic #2 would overshadow the plastic-seeming presidential candidate.

Webb’s appeal just reminds me that the two-party system really does constrain our options and unacceptably narrow our choices. At this point, I plan to support the Democrats next year-–but my ideal really would be a Bloomberg/Webb ticket unfettered by all the political baggage and obligatory ass-kissing that goes with being labeled as Democrats.

Hello Hillary? Goodbye, Majority
I've had an idea rattling around in my head for a couple weeks now for how to demonstrate one of my three big arguments why the Democratic Party absolutely should not nominate Hillary Clinton for the presidency next year: that her nomination would seriously endanger not just Democrats' chances of winning the White House, but also their newly captured majority in the House of Representatives. (The other two are disgust for the Two-Family Duopoly--maybe a non-starter in a culture that seems to revere celebrity ever more--and my strong suspicion that Sen. Clinton holds a similarly expansive view of presidential power that has caused so much trouble during the Bush Misrule.)

The methodological concept I'm playing with is this:

1) Of the 30 or so seats that the Democrats gained in the 2006 midterm elections, take all those who represent districts where Bush won a majority of the vote in 2004.

2) Compare the Democrat's margin of victory in his/her race last year to Bush's margin over John Kerry in '04.

3) Subtract Bush's margin from the Democrat's margin; the resulting figure is the likely 2008 margin either way with a generic Democrat against a generic Republican.

4) Measure polling response (Approve/Disapprove, "Would you consider voting for," etc) to Sen. Hillary Clinton in each district.

5) If "disapprove" is larger (and it will be), divide the difference in half and then subtract that from the figure derived in Step 3.

Example: Gabrielle Giffords (Arizona, 8th district) won her race last year by a margin of 54-42. Bush beat Kerry in that district by 53-47. Subracting that six-point difference from Giffords' twelve-point advantage, she's still up by six. But if Hillary Clinton has 45 percent approval, 55 percent disapproval in the Arizona 8th, and we divide that -10 figure in half, Giffords goes from a six-point edge to a one-point edge. If she's badly outspent (or Clinton is more disliked than I'm positing here), Giffords is very likely sunk.

Nominating Sen. Clinton will severely exacerbate the difficulties many of the first-term Democrats in somewhat hostile territory are already anticipating in their initial--and by normal historical standards, the toughest by far--bid for re-election. Already, many of them Democrats from more conservative districts have tried to inoculate themselves against the ever-looming charge of "liberalism."

[A] CQPolitics.com vote analysis underscores that some Democratic lawmakers, particularly the more centrist members of the freshman class, have been less party-line than others. Twelve of the 25 lowest party unity scores of House Democrats were registered by freshmen.

These 12 hold seats that were among the 30 captured from the Republicans last fall — and all but one represent districts that voted favored Bush for president in 2004.
...
This is not to say that these dozen Democratic freshmen are iconoclasts. They side much more frequently than not with their party on votes that divided Democrats and Republicans. Even on Iraq, before voting for the “clean” war spending bill, all of them previously voted for legislation — subsequently vetoed by Bush — that made a reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq a condition to continue funding.

Some of the dozen Democratic freshmen with the lowest party unity scores in 2007 lean to the right on some social issues. Four of them were among the 14 Democrats who voted against a bill to expand the definition of “hate crime” offenses to include certain violent crimes against an individual because of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. Three of them joined just 13 other House Democrats in voting against legislation to promote embryonic stem cell research.

The Democratic leadership in the House is smart enough to understand that on "hot-button" social issues like abortion and stem-cell research, representatives have to vote with their districts. (It also helps that even now, enough moderate Republicans remain who will cross party lines to vote with the Democrats that the lack of support from conservative Democrats isn't generally enough to kill legislation.) Letting them go on those fights helps ensure that they'll stay on the reservation for big votes on economic and (to a lesser extent) foreign policy issues. If voters are really moved by emotional connections to their public officials, it's a good trade for the Democrats to cede a few legislative votes in exchange for preserving the sense that those officials share the values of their communities.

But the presence of a polarizing figure at the top of the ticket badly strains that perceived connection. No election is ever truly local--in that the personalities of the candidates, provincial issues, and related factors are ALL that matters--nor are they ever entirely national (in that those local factors matter not at all). In years when the presidency is at stake, however, the balance generally tips more toward the national side of the spectrum. Given how popular he remained in most of the "red" states, Bush might have helped a decent number of Republicans vying for lower office in 2004; possibly more significant was that John Kerry, or at least the caricature of him offered by the Bush political team and enabled by Kerry's own awful campaign--really hurt Democrats in those same states. The Oklahoma Senate race that year comes to mind; the Democrats ran a very strong candidate, Brad Carson, who had served in Congress for a few terms and was well within the mainstream of politics in that state, while the Republicans ran an eccentric and extremist obstetrician named Tom Coburn. Smartly, Coburn ran ads that slammed Carson as a "John Kerry Democrat"... and after months of polls showing a close race, he wound up winning by 12 points.

Carson was caught between trying to run his own race and focus attention on Coburn's many nutty qualities, and the need to keep emphasizing how he was different from his party's presidential nominee. This was a hard enough task for local down-ballot candidates with Kerry, who wasn't previously well-known (much less widely loathed) nationally. Sen. Clinton, who might be the most polarizing public figure in America (Bush can't really claim the title anymore with less than one-third of the public supporting him) is likely to have an even stronger "negative coattails" effect.

With the right opponent--pun partly intended--Senator Clinton could win the presidency with a "smarter Kerry" strategy: hold the blue states and run better races in Ohio, New Mexico, Iowa and maybe Florida. But in the states she'll write off, like Kansas and Indiana, a number of Democrats very likely will suffer defeat by association. Whether that's something Democratic primary voters are prepared to accept, I don't know--but I would like to feel more confident they're making an informed decision on the question.

Obama's Merit Badge
Barack Obama took a stand today that probably won't move the polls in his favor, and could possibly hurt him down the line. Speaking to the National Education Association, Obama announced that he supports merit pay for teachers--a step sort of comparable to walking into a Boston sportsbar wearing full Yankee regalia.

Obama's endorsement of merit pay for teachers was the first note deviating from the promise-anything tenor of visits by several presidential candidates to the union this week.

Obama said that improving public education was vital to the U.S. ability to compete in a global economy, pointing out that students here score well below their counterparts in other industrialized nations, particularly in science and mathematics.

"In the 21st century, countries that out-educate us now will out-compete us tomorrow," Obama said. "The work you do and the difference you make has never been more important to the future of this country."

He promised more pay "across the board" for teachers and extra incentives for those willing to work in lower-performing schools in urban and rural areas, though he noted that he would release the details of those goals and other education policies at a later date.

Obama did evidently hit several of the expected (and valid) Democratic notes as well, blasting the implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind policy with a clever one-liner--"Don't pass a law called No Child Left Behind and leave the money behind"--as well as its overreliance on standardized testing. But by supporting merit pay as well as differential bonuses for working in higher-need areas, Obama began to put some substance where his sentiments have been: if his campaign really is to transcend tired zero-sum partisan battles, he needs to acknowledge that arguments on both sides of those battles have some merit.

Resistance to merit compensation is one of two deeply dug-in positions of the teachers' unions that most everyone else hates. (Unwillingness to empower principals to fire crappy educators is the other.) It gives the sense, and understandably so, that the unions are more concerned with protecting the job security and earning power of bad teachers rather than rewarding great ones as a means to improve educational outcomes and ensure qualified teachers in shortage areas (math, science, special education, et al). While the devil certainly resides in the details of how to define and reward "merit"--one reason why he's right to seek a methodology in partnership "with" the NEA rather than doing it "to" them--the concept has to go forward.

I don't have the mental toughness to go track down Hillary Clinton's remarks to the NEA... but then again, do I really have to? You know and I know what she served up: a long list of platitudes about the importance of the profession, a few subtle or overt references to the role of the educator in the "village" she believes it takes to raise a child; an anecdote or two about a Very Special Teacher who helped shape her emerging personhood as a young woman; a promise that her administration will stand shoulder to shoulder with the teachers rather than just placing ever-heavier burdens on them as the Bushistas have done through the imposition of NCLB.

That's all fine. But it neither addresses the real problems within the teaching profession--which I believe should be thoroughly professionalized, with salaries comparable to lawyers and doctors and performance expectations similarly elevated from the current dismal level--nor moves the discussion of education issues forward in a way that's meaningful to anyone who wasn't in the room.

Obama's taking a whack at this particular sacred cow won't do much for him in the short term; most obviously, I can't imagine he'll get the union's endorsement now. But it does suggest that some of those traits liberals were unsure he possessed--a measure of courage, a willingness to take stands--might be there after all, underlaying the lofty rhetoric with a real vision of leadership.

The Twisted World of the WSJ
For awhile now, I've been meaning to start writing more about my own work and experiences here on AIS, at least until football season starts. But I didn't want to get quite this personally involved; yesterday morning I received an e-mail that a policy brief I recently wrote for the Center for an Urban Future, about the importance of New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), was featured in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

Now, it's always nice to see one's work get attention, and indirectly the editorial endorsed our view that the program, which puts upwards of 40,000 New Yorkers ages 14 to 21 into subsidized employment for seven weeks every summer, is beneficial. But... well, read it for yourself and see if you can spot the problem:

...[A] sobering new report from the New York City-based Center for an Urban Future shows how minimum-wage laws are already hurting the unskilled and inexperienced.

The "Summer Help" study assesses New York City's publicly funded Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), which each year matches tens of thousands of young people between the ages of 14 and 21 with employers ranging from the local library to investment banks.
...
Today, however, the New York program serves 20% fewer young adults than it did in 1999, and last year it turned away 30,000 mostly black and Latino applicants. The report cites minimum wage-increases in the Empire State --one of 30 states that mandates a minimum higher than the federal floor -- as a factor in the program's decline.

"The higher state minimum wage that went into effect in 2005," writes author David Jason Fischer, "added to the challenge of funding SYEP by increasing the cost per participant, making it difficult to keep SYEP enrollment levels the same without year-over-year budget increases or additional administrative cuts." New York's minimum wage increased once again this year
to $7.15 from $6.75, adding another $3.5 million in costs.

The harm from minimum-wage laws is well-documented, and even government job programs aren't immune. ...

Did I write that sentence? Yes.

Do I "cite minimum wage increasees... as a factor in the program's decline"? HELL NO.

Entirely unmentioned in the editorial are either of the two biggest reasons we suggest for why enrollment is down from 1999: the calamitous decline in federal funding for SYEP--from $42.5 million in '99 to $5.4 million in 2006--and, to a considerably lesser extent, the lack of awareness or interest on the part of the private sector in NYC in supporting seasonal employment for young people. What they did, of course, was take one point we made, in the interest of intellectual honesty--the fact that the higher minimum wage raises the cost per SYEP participant--and stretch it beyond wafer-thin to resume their usual ideological battle against the minimum wage.

I don't suppose I need mention that I wasn't contacted before this editorial was published, nor that I vehemently disagree with its conclusion. The only time I've ever taken on the question of the minimum wage in a professional capacity was in late 2004, when we endorsed the move then current in the New York state legislature to pass the three-stage increase that has brought the wage to $7.15 per hour in our report "Between Hope and Hard Times." Before doing so, we examined a lot of research for and against minimum wage increases, and we reached an informed conclusion that such measures did considerably more good than harm. In New York, this manifestly has proven to be the case, as the Fiscal Policy Institute found six months ago in this short report.

To my knowledge, this is the first time my work has been misappropriated in this dishonest way. I wrote a letter in response to the WSJ, but have not yet heard whether or not they plan to publish it. Here's the gist:

Your July 3 editorial, “Minimum Wage, Jobless Kids,” twists the findings of the Center for an Urban Future’s report “Summer Help,” which I authored, almost beyond recognition. Notwithstanding your focus on the minimum wage, our primary finding was that the biggest reason enrollment for New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program has decreased by 20 percent was the precipitous decline of federal dollars to support the program—from $42.5 million in 1999 to $5.4 million last summer. It is irresponsible, to say the least, to hijack this point in order to argue against the minimum wage—a premise with which we strongly disagree, and that much research has refuted.

Despite its clearly mischievous intent, the editorial has the germ of a point: if any situation justifies a sub-minimum wage, it is publicly subsidized employment for part-time workers who are not their families’ primary wage earners. Given the proven value of summer youth employment, it might well be a better public investment to employ a larger number of teens at a slightly lower hourly wage. To stretch this point into a blanket condemnation of the minimum wage, however, is a dishonest distortion of our work.

Happy 4th of July.