Take These Broken Wings
I'm out of here for about a week and a half, starting late on Thursday the 23rd, for a vacation in Italy with my wife. If all goes to plan, when I get back on the evening of April 3, the Phillies will be 1-0 and the temperature will actually reflect the season known as "spring," rather than this 30-something degree unpleasantness we've had for most of this month.

But while I'm actually feeling pretty good about the Phillies right now--though, in deference to The Navigator, I'm not making any predictions--my other favorite team isn't looking so strong. I speak, of course, about the Philadelphia Eagles.

In sports, I believe that when teams enjoy a sustained run of success, they get arrogant and come to believe they're smarter than the competition. One bad year is too easily dismissed as an aberration; sometimes it takes a half a decade of regular beatings for humility to return. Sometimes--think of the 1980s-era Phillies, who didn't even start to smarten up until a decade-plus on the receiving end of ass-kickings--it takes a lot longer than that.

As Rich Hoffman wrote in Wednesday's Philadelphia Daily News, this year we're going to find out whether the Eagles really are as smart as they think they are. Right now, my strong hunch is that they aren't, and that we're more likely to see more sub-.500 seasons than a return to the top of the NFC East. The 2006 Eagles right now look like a seven-win team to me, given the issues of age, health, and quality of division opponents. And even that might be optimistic.

Here's an easy way to think about it:

1) Thanks to advancing age and accumulated injuries, the remaining players from the team that went to Super Bowl XXXIX, by and large, won't be as good in 2006 as they were in 2004.

2) Of everyone else, pending the April draft, we've probably lost more starter-level talent (Owens, Burgess, Simon, Chad Lewis, Mayberry--all of whom were solid or better for that team) than we've brought on from 2004 til now (Howard, Gaffney, Barber, Brown, Patterson). If Jon Runyan signs elsewhere, the gap widens further.

3) The division opponents are all now considerably better than they were in 2004. None look to me like probably Super Bowl teams, but all three are probably 8-11 win clubs. If the defensive players Parcells drafted last spring develop as expected, Julius Jones stays healthy, and TO more or less behaves, the Cowboys might be as strong as any club in the NFC. (Dear god, I'm not sure I've ever written a more galling sentence.)

4) Andy Reid's regime has not been so good in the draft--or, more to the point, developing the talent brought in from the draft--that we should hang our hopes on what happens in late April.

Another way to think about it is that NFL clubs win by outplaying their opponents on the lines and at the skill positions. Again, just thinking about the NFC East, the Eagles come up short in both dimensions. For playmakers on offense, they've got Donovan McNabb, Brian Westbrook, Reggie Brown, Jafar Gaffney, and LJ Smith; Dallas has Drew Bledsoe, Jones, TO, Terry Glenn, and Jason Witten. I'll take McNabb over Bledsoe; do the Eagles look better anywhere else? You could make a case for Westbrook over Jones, but the bigger, younger guy is likely the better bet going forward.

Up the Jersey Turnpike, the Giants have Eli Manning, Tiki Barber, Plaxico Burress, Amani Toomer and Jeremy Shockey. Again, McNabb's my preferred quarterback, though that gap will close. Otherwise, it's all Blue. Down I-95, the Redskins have Mark Brunell, Clinton Portis, Santana Moss, Brandon Lloyd or Antwaan Randle-El, and Chris Cooley. This is a recording: McNabb (if healthy) is the best quarterback in the division. And you could argue that LJ Smith is a better tight end than Cooley (who's listed as a fullback on the 'Skins' depth chart, for what that's worth).

Overall, I think it's clear that the Eagles have the worst overall talent at the offensive skill positions in the NFC East. And it's not particularly close; while McNabb is pretty clearly better than either of the veteran passers in Dallas and Washington, both guys can manage a game just fine--which minimizes the difference. Now, if the Eagles had a clearly superior offensive line, maybe that would make up for the deficit at the skill positions. Would you argue that they do? I sure wouldn't: the sacks-allowed and rush-per-carry stats peg their line (admittedly depleted by injuries) as substantially worse than either New York's or Washington's, and just a bit better than Dallas. With former Pro Bowler Runyan possibly leaving and fellow tackle Tra Thomas coming off a serious back injury, there might be more room for decline than improvement.

Rumor this afternoon (Thursday) is that Runyan might come back after all... but I'm out of time, and might (or might not) talk about the defense when I return. Suffice it to say that I don't think things are quite as bad on that side of the ball, but if they don't take a defensive tackle with their first draft pick, I'll be pretty upset.

My Nomination
...for one-trick political site of the year: right here.

What's particularly nice about this is that any Democrat this side of Jim Traficant (hell, maybe even him) probably could run against Cruella and successfully raise as much money as s/he needed. Unless Harris uses those same mad computer skillz that improperly purged likely Democratic voters from the Florida rolls in 2000 to access Bill Gates' Swiss bank account, her money ultimately won't matter.

Of course, it also doesn't help that she's implicated (though not facing imminent legal action) in one of this year's many Republican lobbying scandals, or that she's trailing incumbent Democratic Senator Bill Nelson by 10 points or so.

Bush Gets One Right (sort of)
Today's New York Times informs us that President Bush is about to embark upon another of those "series of major policy speeches" on Iraq. Though he has no new initiatives to unveil, and the ongoing drumbeat of bad news from that troubled region seems to present a risk of (yet more) severe political embarrassment in a second term that's well on the way to setting a standard of substantial and stylistic political failure, Bush evidently is set to make one meta-point that I think is well taken: America can't simply disengage from the rest of the world.

[S]tarting on Monday, just a few days shy of the third anniversary of Mr. Bush's order to topple Saddam Hussein, the president will begin an effort to explain his Iraq strategy anew in the changed environment of increased sectarian killings.

He acknowledged on Saturday that "many of our fellow citizens" are "now wondering if the entire mission is worth it."

But rather than simply delve into the familiar talk about the need to root out terrorists abroad so they cannot strike Americans here, the White House plans to have Mr. Bush expand his discussion of the need for the United States to embrace a new role in the world, even if that means explaining the benefits of globalization to a nation that does not appear to be in a mood to hear that message.
...
A search of the White House Web site confirms that Mr. Bush, who in the days before he took office kept the take-no-prisoners speeches of Teddy Roosevelt on a table at his ranch, made little mention of "globalization" for much of his first five years in office, even when European leaders brought it up.

Asked once, several years ago, about his aversion to the topic, one of his senior aides said Mr. Bush associated the word with "mushy Clintonianism."

"It ranks up there with 'nation-building,' " he added.

No longer. Now Mr. Bush is moving into a new phase of his presidency, not by choice or natural inclination, it seems, but by necessity. Mr. Bush changed his tone on nation-building several years ago.

As the invasion turned to occupation, he emphasized the spread of democracy. But even that talk, especially during his re-election campaign, had a unilateralist subtext: the schools and polling places were open because the hammer of the American military made it possible.

His new theme is different, because it is all about interdependence. Two of his aides say the near defeat of the Central American Free Trade Agreement in Congress last summer — it passed by one vote, after arm-twisting by the president brought just enough Republicans back into the fold — jolted Mr. Bush into recognizing a new retreat from the world by his own party.

There are actually two things to like here. Globalization, first of all, is a fact of life whether we embrace it or not. Bush is very much with the mainstream of economic opinion when he says (as is noted later in this article) that we should be excited, not solely apprehensive, at what "a 300-million-person market of middle-class citizens here in India" can mean for the sale of American-made products.

(The corollary, which unfortunately Bush doesn't seem to grasp at the policymaking level, is that to take advantage of this emerging market, you need to continuously cultivate a world-class knowledge workforce that will create things of interest and value to that market--as well as to this one. Thus, government disinvestment in financial assistance for higher education and research and development within numerous fields of inquiry is ultimately self-defeating, no matter how happy it makes Grover Norquist when you cut the "investment budget" to fund his tax cut.)

Given how badly Bush has failed to explain anything with non-emotional arguments (see: Social Security "reform," Medicare Part D, Iraq since the '04 election), it seems like a stretch to believe that he'll be able to make this case. It can be done, however, and my guess is that as the 2008 election draws closer, there will be both Democrats and Republicans who successfully explain the issue. (He could also just ask Bill Clinton to do it.)

Bush's real problem is with the other half of the "engagement" argument: using America's power beyond our borders. When you've lost William F. Buckley on Iraq, who's left to count on? The administration's toxic mix of dishonesty, rhetorical incoherence, and just piss-poor implementation is what's really behind the rising neo-isolationist impulse, and this is Bad with a capital B for the country: though Saddam was not a threat, and we should have known as much, Iran could well prove to present a major danger to world peace and stability as well as American interests. Pakistan, too, is a nuclear-armed dictatorship with radical religious elements who want to rule; if Musharraf falls, it's hard to predict what would happen.

Rather than either acting unilaterally, as we essentially did in Iraq, or retreating from the world's troubled areas, we should be using every instrument in the toolbox of governance--sanctions, coalition-building, and force as a last result--to advance both our interests and ideals. By just about any standard, George H.W. Bush did this successfully in both managing the first Gulf War and helping to build a stable post-Cold War order; he had his failures as well, with China after the 1989 crackdown, the Balkans, and in places like East Timor, but on balance he was a successful foreign policy president.

And, terrible though she was as National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice has actually done a decent job at this since taking over the State Department--working through the EU on Iran, reaching out to China and Russia as well, trying to mediate disputes elsewhere in the Middle East. That's a pretty good start. The hard political sell, however, will come if/when those measures fail and some use of force is called for. I don't know which party will carry the neo-isolationist banner at that point--but whoever is in front will have a much stronger case because of George Bush's failures in Iraq.

Let There Be More Darkness
In the not quite six years I've been researching and writing on social policy issues, the most difficult but also most rewarding thing I've done was the Working Poor Families Project. Toward the end of 2004, CUF and our partners at the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy released a report titled "Between Hope and Hard Times," about low-income working families in New York State and how government policies in a number of areas, from post-secondary financial aid to economic development investments to income supports like the Earned Income Tax Credit and Unemployment Insurance, helped or hindered them in their efforts to get ahead. The basic premise of the project, which was supported by three major national philanthropic foundations, struck me then and now as deeply resonant with the whole American idea: that families who work hard and live right should enjoy a measure of economic security.

We found that despite the general prosperity of the last decade-plus and some highly laudable programs at the state and local levels, the numbers of low-income working families in the state have increased. (A forthcoming update brief, to be released later this month, shows that this trend unfortunately has accelerated in the 18 months since we issued the full report.) The question we couldn't answer to my satisfaction, though, was this: are today's working poor substantially the same people who had jobs but struggled to make ends meet five, ten, twenty years ago? The problem, in other words, isn't necessarily poverty: it's opportunity and mobility. One state agency we engaged with in the course of researching the report presented us with a Census study from the late 1990s indicating that economic mobility remains high; we also found a study by two Federal Reserve economists that strongly suggested that mobility had sharply declined since the 1970s. In the report, we wrote that "for the state to truly gauge how its anti-poverty policies are performing, we must have better information."

So it comes as a disappointment, but not a huge surprise, that the Bush administration proposes to do away with one of the federal government's more effective programs that provide *any* information on this subject: the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation. Ironically, the study that suggested the enduring strength of economic mobility was a product of SIPP data. Follows here a little description, of both the program itself and how its demise has been presented:

The SIPP is the only major longitudinal survey that tracks the same families over time. While it has a representative sample that allows it to be used to examine issues affecting the whole population, it over samples low income households, which makes it especially useful for examining the impact of TANF, Medicaid, and other anti-poverty programs. Ostensibly, the reason for eliminating the SIPP is to save the $40 million annual cost of fielding the survey (@ 6 hours of the Iraq war).

Usually, plans to alter or eliminate major surveys are floated well in advance in order to get input from the community of researchers, policy makers, and advocates that rely on the survey. This plan was crafted in the dark of night and kept secret until the 2007 budget was released. Perhaps the secrecy was needed to keep us safe from the terrorists, but this does not seem like best path for producing reliable data.

To put it mildly, $40 million is not a lot of money in a multi-trillion dollar federal budget. It's the dime you find in the couch cushion, if that. For that matter, it's a pretty miniscule fraction of the money we spend on the programs SIPP helps us understand better: Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the federal welfare program that was recently stealth-reauthorized when the Republicans inserted it within a budget reconciliation bill (a DeLay special: enact something that could never pass on its merits by tying it to a measure necessary to keep government functioning), has been flat-funded since Clinton first signed it in 1996, and we still spend something like $16 billion on it, plus state matching funds. Medicaid, the growth of which is squeezing state budgets from coast to coast, consumes a much bigger share of the federal budget.

A reflexive right-wing response to this whole problem might just be, "Fuck it--we should eliminate all those programs anyway." (In fact, I think one of our visiting trolls pretty much wrote that a few weeks ago.) Putting aside the human consequences of such a switch, the truth is that it's not happening: not now, not ever. Even the most rabid Republican governor would foul his wool britches without the billions in federal aid to fund income support and social safety net programs; they want more, not less. For that matter, consider poor Wal-Mart; without Medicaid, they'd be unable to sustain a workforce. The point is that these programs aren't just handouts; they're pivotal to the functioning of the U.S. economy. (Also keep in mind that majorities of the poor and near-poor work; this isn't your grandpa's Cadillac welfare queen, not that she ever really existed as much more than a trope for haters.)

So we're going to have these programs, and we're going to spend billions of dollars on them. The question is whether we want to keep the tools to evaluate them, see where they're helping and where they can be stretched farther and where they're being wasted--or whether we'd just prefer to remain in blissful ignorance, out of some notion that the less we know about those on the economic margin, the less we have to worry about them.

Education Pays--Just Not as Much as Hoped
One of the truisms of the policy field I work in is that post-secondary education is the best investment any individual can make in his or her economic future. And in a comparative sense, this is all but irrefutable: over the course of a working lifetime, the average college graduate makes as much as $1 million more than someone who boasts only a high school diploma. Even those who end their schooling with an associate's degree, or no college credential at all, earn dramatically more than high school grads who never set foot in a college classroom. The argument that education pays has been such a mainstay in Center for an Urban Future reports that we had a shorthand name for the chart used to illustrate the earnings premium for college grads: "More Ed, More Bread." Here's the same info with a bit more color to it.

A corollary to the Education Pays case is that as the United States and global economies become ever more responsive to "knowledge workers" and the specialized training one can only get after high school, the earnings differential would only continue to grow. Adding in the coming demographic crunch that's been a particular focus for me--in brief, what happens as Baby Boomers start to retire or cut back their hours in large numbers over the next 10 years or so--one can predict that the rate of earnings increase for college grads will spike as employers grapple with a shortage of high value workers that some analysts project will run close to 10 million by 2020.

All this might indeed turn out to be the case. But in his New York Times column today (subscription only; I finally swallowed hard and ponied up for TimesSelect), Paul Krugman points out that it isn't happening just yet.

What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.

I think of Mr. Bernanke's position, which one hears all the time, as the 80-20 fallacy. It's the notion that the winners in our increasingly unequal society are a fairly large group — that the 20 percent or so of American workers who have the skills to take advantage of new technology and globalization are pulling away from the 80 percent who don't have these skills.

The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.

Krugman goes on to note just how skewed the earnings increase has been: between 1972 and 2001, Americans at the 90th percentile of earnings saw their real wages increase by about 1 percent a year--not bad, but far from spectacular. (What I wish he'd included was how this compared to the change for those further down the distribution.) At the 99th percentile, however, income nearly doubled, rising 87 percent over the period. Those in the top 1000th of earnings did twice as well again, as their income increased by 181 percent. And the highest-earning 10,000th of Americans hit the jackpot, as their take-home pay exploded by 497 percent.

On Josh Marshall's site, Max Sawicky comments more strongly on what he deems the "meritocratic fallacy." In his take, the argument does seem to more closely resemble what's sometimes called Social Spenserism: the notion that the wealthy somehow inherently deserve their wealth, and the destitute their suffering.

What bothers me as a policy researcher is that I've been as guilty as Ben Bernanke and most others (on a comparatively miniscule scale, but still) in advancing this notion of a semi-meritocratic elite moving forward. Again, Krugman sums up nicely why this is such a common view:

Why would someone as smart and well informed as Mr. Bernanke get the nature of growing inequality wrong? Because the fallacy he fell into tends to dominate polite discussion about income trends, not because it's true, but because it's comforting. The notion that it's all about returns to education suggests that nobody is to blame for rising inequality, that it's just a case of supply and demand at work. And it also suggests that the way to mitigate inequality is to improve our educational system — and better education is a value to which just about every politician in America pays at least lip service.

The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's the real story.

While it's always helpful to have the facts at hand and to puncture even semi-benevolent myths like this one (I'm not particularly sorry to see an argument that pushes more people toward higher education, even if it's inaccurate on specifics), the solution is not as clear-cut. Krugman is historically correct in asserting, as he does in the close of the article, that at some point wealth inequity undermines democratic society, and it's probably a political winner for Democrats and maybe moderate Republicans to point out the widening gap between aggregate GDP growth and real-wage stagnation for almost everybody. But how do you push a more equitable distribution of profits from our more productive economy without too strongly disincentivizing entrepreneurship? I suppose it's a question that has to be answered through governmental art, rather than economic science.

The Politics of Port Security
If there's one thing the Bush administration does well, it's the symbolic politics of national security. They might not be able to capture bin Laden, run a tribunal system for detainees, or even secure nuclear power plants, but when it comes to getting in front of the cameras and looking like they're doing a good job, it really has been "Mission Accomplished."

So I am absolutely baffled as to why they're pushing this takeover of major East Coast ports by a company based in the United Arab Emirates, a country that has harbored and funded terrorists. In doing so, they've handed the Democrats an unscrewupable--even for Democrats--issue on which to run to the president's right, and prompted criticism from every embattled Republican governor and Congress member. As Bull Moose wrote this morning, "[T]he left and right are united against the port deal. This is a debacle that can bring together Ann Coulter and Arianna Huffington." Beyond symbolic squawkers, I can't imagine even the leftiest lefty on Daily Kos speaking up for the Dubai interests, nor even the most reflexive Bush-worshipping Frei Republik apologist backing the administration on this one.

So who's going to defend this thing? The Times notes that Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security secretary and a New Yorker, has been on TV citing unspecified "assurances in place" that everything is going to be fine. But this is the guy who was just slammed for his handling of Hurricane Katrina, and is well known for his managerial deficiencies, now saying "trust us!" Against him, we've got everyone from Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich, a Republican who's surely thinking this will help him in what looks like an uphill re-election campaign this fall, to New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, who even more certainly is thinking that some national security cred will help him win a very tough race against the son of 9/11 Commission chair Tom Kean in their November contest. Menendez and Hillary Clinton are likely to propose legislation that would ban future transactions of this type; will any Senator up for re-election this fall vote against that bill?

This looks like a huge self-inflicted wound for the Bush administration, energizing Democrats and dividing Republicans. Even if there's airtight justification in the details for this transaction, the reason these guys generally win political fights is that they take positions that don't need to be explained. John Kerry's infamous "I voted for the legislation before I voted against it" was explainable; it was just that few bothered to go past a statement that was idiotic on its face. Turning over port security to a company based in a country that harbors terrorist killers seems similarly dense, and it's very unlikely that many people will press for the specifics--even if the secrecy-obsessed Bushies were to offer them.

Randy and Ralph
Looking at Josh Marshall's site last night, I found this sordid exposition on the sins of former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican of California. Duke's deeds are pretty stomach-turning, from soliciting bribes to browbeating aides with overactive consciences. As a former war hero turned crooked pol, his is a pretty compelling fall-from-grace story, and a potential bonanza for Democratic candidates who will look to pin that story to the self-serving and shameless Republican House majority this fall.

But none of this jumped out at me immediately upon reading the TPM entry. No, what I saw was this:

"Having admitted unparalleled corruption, defendant Randall H. Cunningham now comes before the Court to be sentenced..."

Emphasis mine. Yes, the new poster boy for right-wing wrongdoing is a namesake of the man who was perhaps my last great sports hero. (And by the way, God bless the wikipedia author/s for noting the unmatched, indeed unmatchable greatness of "QB Eagles.") No idea how this had never previously struck me.

At the other end of the spectrum of right-wing vileness is Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition leader, Republican consultant, and bosom chum of Jack Abramoff. Reed is currently running for the office of Georgia Lieutenant Governor, a position he seems to consider a steppingstone to a future presidential run. Reed's close and extended Abramoff ties already have done damage to his bid, and what might sink him altogether is The Book of Ralph--a short graphic biography highlighting various episodes in Reed's checkered career.

Reading "The Book of Ralph," it seems almost impossible that a lawsuit won't be forthcoming, but considering that all its quotes are taken directly from previously published media stories, from Reed's tearful denunciations after being exposed as a plagiarist in college more than 20 years ago, to his spokeswoman's statement two months back that she referred to her own vagina as "my big cavernous pit of love," I'm not sure there's grounds.

More broadly, if this gets big enough, I wonder if we're seeing the next stage in the evolution of political attacks. In 1999 or so, I had this idea for a satirical comic book titled "The Adventures of George W. Bush at Harvard Business School," but having neither art skills nor abundant free time back then, I did nothing with this notion. Could we have changed history? Guess we'll never know.

Bad News From Ohio
Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett, a Democrat who captured national attention last year for his near-victorious congressional race in an Ohio district where President Bush had won 64 percent of the vote in 2004, announced last night that he was ending his bid for the Senate this fall. Hackett's departure from the race ends the prospect of a competitive primary and all but ensures that Congressman Sherrod Brown will challenge embattled incumbent Republican Mike DeWine this fall, in a race Democrats desperately need if they are to have any hope of recapturing a majority.

I don't know much about Brown. From what I've read, he's a good man and a good progressive, and I hope he wins. Party leaders had been pushing Hackett to drop out for weeks, largely because of Brown's perceived advantages in fundraising, organization, and experience. Hackett had been criticized for his high "burn rate," a political term of art that refers to how quickly a candidate spends the money he or she has raised. His well-publicized comment of a few weeks back comparing intolerant religious leaders in the U.S. to Islamic radicals probably made people like Chuck Schumer very nervous, and he's reputedly prone to a lot of swearing (a Marine trademark, some say). Finally, Hackett did not endorse Brown in his withdrawal announcement--a step that I'm sure confirms for some his bad judgment and unreliable temperament.

All that said, it strikes me that there's something very wrong with a Democratic Party that steps on the aspirations of citizens who enter politics out of conviction, rather than careerism, and that fears rather than embraces honesty and resistance to scripted, consultant-driven politics... particularly considering how badly Democrats have fared using those scripts.

Worse, the push against Hackett could threaten what I think is by far the Democrats' best storyline in 2006: the more than 50 military veterans the party has recruited to run for Congress. The message seems to be: "We want to use you as window dressing, but if we can't control you, don't bother." It will be interesting to see how many of the "Band of Brothers" will follow Hackett out of politics.

The party leaders wanted, and presumably still want, Hackett to repeat his 2005 run in Ohio's 2nd congressional district, where Jean Schmidt, the Republican who narrowly beat him last year has disgraced herself by slandering another Marine, Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha, and will face a strong primary challenge. If Schmidt survives that, she'd likely be at a disadvantage in a rematch against Hackett; if she lost, Hackett likely would enjoy greater name recognition and a higher profile than the Republican.

But Hackett's not interested.

I will not be running in the Second Congressional District nor for any other elective office. This decision is final, and not subject to reconsideration.

I told the voters from the beginning that I am not a career politician and never aspired to be--that I was about leadership, service and commitment.

Similarly, I told party officials that I had given my word to other good Democrats, who will take the fight to the Second District, that I would not run. In reliance on my word they entered the race. I said it. I meant it. I stand by it. At the end of the day, my word is my bond and I will take it to my grave.

Compare that code of conduct to the reports that Democratic bigwigs, including Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, contacted donors to dissuade them from giving to Hackett.

Party leaders felt that Brown had a much better chance of victory in November. Given the facts of money and organization, and the congressman's presumed greater ability to avoid controversy, this might well be the case. But I will say this: if DeWine beats Brown, everyone who was involved in this decision should find another line of work. Because this will be the ultimate case of the tone-deafness of professional Democrats hurting the country as well as the party.

Cheney Shoots Fellow Hunter; Late-Nite Comic Writers Rejoice
The press and blogosphere are starting to get into a froth over the story out of Texas that our Vice-President, Citizen Dick Cheney, accidentally shot and wounded a companion while hunting for quail at a Texas ranch on Saturday. I'm really trying not to wallow in all the tasteless jokes one could make here (though if Cheney wanted to shoot someone in the wilderness, he passed up five opportunities to do so 40 years back). I do have to point out, however, that on one of the Sunday talk shows this weekend, Howard Dean referred to Aaron Burr while talking about Cheney's possible involvement in the Valerie Plame leak. Did he already somehow know that Cheney had just become the second Vice-President to shoot a man while in that office?

I think it's likely the left blogosphere will gin up a lot of wacky conspiracy theories around this incident. (In fact, I wrote one myself on DailyKos--in part to see if people would take it seriously given how over the top it was, and in part because, as I wrote in the post, so much of the Bush administration really has unfolded like a fourth-rate political potboiler novel that I can't totally rule out the possibility of shenanigans.) Much of the speculation already is around the guy who got shot, a 78 year-old lawyer whom Bush appointed to a Texas regulatory body in 1999 under somewhat controversial conditions, and around the family who owned the property, who are evidently six-figure givers in Texas Republican circles. With that cast of characters, and the fact that this incident wasn't publicly reported until about 24 hours after it happened, they speculate that something is being covered up.

As I said, I wouldn't put much past Cheney: he's shown bad judgment and cretinous disregard for people over his career, and his health issues and the medications he's presumably on all could factor into an accident or whatever. But the people involved--well, ask yourself this: what type of people would you expect Cheney to hang out with on weekends? Buddhists on meditative retreat? Ravers? Of course he's spending time with former/current political givers and fellow "big-time" Republicans. Given that the sheriff of the town (in the above-linked NYT piece) says there was nothing amiss, and that the guy seems to be recovering, it seems that at worst the "cover-up" is of Cheney doing something stupid or having an accident of some kind. In that sense he's probably no different than any other rich guy who's able to keep something embarassing but ultimately harmless out of the public spotlight.

(That said, imagine the reaction from certain quarters if it had been Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, or John Kerry who'd accidentally shot someone while hunting.)

From Bad to Worse?
I've believed for awhile that though things are rough enough right now in terms of political bitterness in America, we will really see a crackup if/when Democrats retake power, particularly if a perceived liberal with a polarizing personality wins the presidency. The rage on the right now lacks a focus and just manifests as general loathing for an internal enemy that's contained, though not yet destroyed. (If only we had the power in the press and other areas they constantly ascribe to us.) But even two years ago, in the Swift Boating of a relatively inoffensive Democrat like John Kerry, we saw the depths of right-wing fury. If he'd won, it would have been much worse; if a certain former First Lady runs (as this piece seems to suggest she will)--and, for many reasons including this one, I pray she does not--and wins, it's hard to imagine how bad it will get.

Maybe I'm wrong about this; I hope so. One could argue (and many do) that today's liberals are as or more het up about Bush, as irrationally loathing of him, as right-wingers were toward Bill Clinton. The differences as I see it are twofold: one, Republicans controlled Congress, so Clinton's power to force us all into gay marriage and compel pregnancies just so we could abort them was presumably limited, and two, public opinion polling consistently found him with majority approval. Most people thought the guy was doing a pretty decent job. By contrast, Democrats are totally shut out of power at the national level and thus can't check presidential excesses, and something like 60 percent of the public--including, presumably, a lot of people who voted for him last time--thinks Bush is doing a lousy job. In that respect, you could argue that liberals have more to be upset about, and that doesn't even get into the substantive differences between extramarital shenanigans and the policy failures and falsehoods around Iraq, New Orleans, claiming of virtually unlimited executive powers, the politically motivated outing of intelligence agents, government-approved torture, and the rest of it. Did the hardcore people on the right really take that much issue with Clinton's official activities? I don't think so.

Either way, though, the great divide is getting wider and wider. Last night I read this upsetting item on DailyKos; worse were the dozens of comment responses telling similar stories. There are few places where one can even engage someone on "the other side" in a conversation about public affairs, and many fewer where that conversation doesn't devolve into heated insults and rhetorical excess. I've thought of it for a couple years now as a "cold civil war" (though a Google search I did earlier tonight showed that I'm far from the only one who's come up with that term), in that politics are dividing families and sundering friendships. Happily, we haven't started shooting yet, though in my more pessimistic moments I wonder if that's just a matter of time.

As this blog often shows, I'm certainly prone to the overheated phrase and gratuitous political insult too. It's an outgrowth of frustration and deep sadness at what I think is happening in our country, but that doesn't justify it--particularly as I believe neither in the infallability, in any sense, of the Democrats nor in the thoroughgoing evil of the Republicans. No faction has a monopoly on either good ideas or ethical virtue.

What I think I'm finding, though, is a difference in my own approach between those who are willing to engage on the level of ideas, and those who seem to view public life as nothing more than a zero-sum contest of political factions, with "our side" and "their side." The first bunch have my respect and appreciation as Americans who simply see things differently than I do. Once in a while, they might convince me of something, or I them; even when that doesn't happen, I try to see value in the exchange itself. The country is a community and we need to try and share it; when we stop communicating with those of other viewpoints, we start dehumanizing them, and that opens the door to dark things.

The second group, though, seems to want to tear that door off its hinges. I wonder how many of them are even able to articulate a belief system when it comes to government and community; all they seem to know is hating liberals, with no critical thinking capacity, no desire or ability to look at things as they are rather than as they want them to be.

(As the above-noted Daily Kos--though not that particular link, for the most part--and so many other websites show, there is a corresponding group on the left that starts from the premise "Republicans are wrong and evil," and pretty much stops there too. I won't call them liberals, as I don't think they're deserving of the name. Since they're marginalized, they don't yet scare me, but they're obviously symptomatic of the larger problem I'm talking about here.)

I don't know what it will take to heal the deep rift in our society. But removing those in power who gain by it strikes me as a good place to start.

"If you've got nothing to hide, why should you care?"

...asked a commentor responding to the Navigator's post below this one.

Why indeed?

Boehner: Ix-Nay on That Eform-Ray!
Strictly from a political standpoint, I'm disappointed that the House Republican majority chose Ohio Rep. John Boehner to succeed Tom DeLay as majority leader, rather than Missouri's Roy Blunt. A man who left his wife of 30 years to dally with a tobacco lobbyist, whom he later married, Blunt's standing as a Republican literally in bed with Big Tobacco would have been a Democratic admaker's shimmery dream brought to life.

From a policy standpoint, though, I guess Boehner's about as good as we could hope from this collection of miscreants, troglodytes and fanatics. He's generally been a solid vote for greater resources and more flexible programming on federal workforce development and job training policy, my area of professional focus, and the (otherwise despicable) Rep. Peter King of Long Island pointed out last week that as an Ohioan, Boehner might generally be better disposed toward urban and economic issues than DeLay was or Blunt would have been.

But the reason the caucus chose him rather than Blunt pretty clearly was their fear of Abramoff-related voter rage this November, and their wish to present a different face to the country. In that sense, while Boehner might come across as less blatantly evil than dead-eyed DeLay or the baleful Blunt, he's sending signals that on the meat, he won't be very much different:

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has begun shifting his party toward an alternative lobbying reform package that stresses disclosure of lobbying contacts rather than the virtual ban on gifts and privately funded trips proposed last month by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

In an interview yesterday, Boehner emphasized that he has no plan to change lobbying rules and will not draft one until he can reach a broad consensus with House Republicans, possibly at a retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore next week. But he was quick to say the proposals that Hastert and House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) put forward are not the Republican Conference's plan.
...
...Boehner will emphasize the immediate disclosure of contacts between lobbyists and lawmakers, allowing the voting public to decide whether those contacts are proper. And he will tackle what many Republicans see as the root of the lobbying problem -- the ease with which lawmakers can dole out millions of dollars in favors through pet provisions in spending bills.

Boehner said he endorsed only "in concept" a bill by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) that would make every such provision -- or "earmark" -- subject to challenge on the House or Senate floor.
...
[H]e added, "members need to understand what's happening in the world. They need to understand what's happening with industry. That won't happen if they're locked up in a cubbyhole here in the Capitol."

Boehner called for the disclosure of any meal or gift from a lobbyist within 24 hours, both by the lawmaker and the lobbyist.

"If you can't go out and justify a $60 meal and see it in the press, then maybe you shouldn't go," he said. "But if you can, go ahead and do it, and let the world see what that relationship was. I think that's a far smarter way to go about this."

Maybe it's me, but this sounds like Boehner wants to incorporate the principle of "Don't ask permission; beg forgiveness" into law. No congressman is going to be deterred from shady doings by the prospect of disclosure; public shame doesn't work in the Age of Rove.

Consider: someone like Josh Marshall could rail all day about how Congressman Mephisto (R-TX) disclosed on a government website that OmniMegaCorp, where his wife works as a $400,000-a-year press flack, has paid for every bite of food he's eaten since 1983, and link to a Common Cause study that found that the distinguished gentleman has slipped clauses into legislation that have fatted Omni's bottom line by tens of millions. But will Mephisto's constituents even hear about it? Not likely; local media may or may not seize upon the story, and will make that decision--which you need to actuate the whole "shame" concept--based on factors beyond anyone's control. Perhaps if his opponent has sufficient resources, s/he will run a few campaign ads. But given that he's probably in a gerrymandered district, it won't be easy to raise the money to start with; donors like to support candidates with a legit shot to win.

And even if the word does get out, it's still far from assured that consequences will ensue. Inevitably, Mephisto's critics will be smeared as partisans, and a Scaife-funded think tank will produce another study proving the Congressman's direct lineage from Charlemagne.

If we believe the behavior in question--in this case, over-fraternization of public servants with lobbyists--either materially worsens public policy or erodes the public's trust in their elected officials, we should ban it. A cynical call for mere "disclosure," knowing that such information very likely will no more register than the proverbial fart in a windstorm, does nothing to reform the system.

Tragedy, Aisle 1. Farce? Aisle 2.
Two articles this morning nicely illustrate the state of things in American politics. First is Michael Kinsley on slate.com, pointing up again the Democratic Party's unfailing aim at its own feet, and how the broad contours of the political culture serve to enlarge the target.

It seems to be time once again to play Kick the Democrats. Everyone can play, including Democrats. The rules are simple. When Republicans lose elections, it is because they didn't get enough votes. When Democrats lose elections, it is because they have lost their principles and lost their way. Or they have kept their principles, which is an even worse mistake.

Democrats represent no one who is not actually waiting in line for a latte at a Starbucks within 150 yards of the east or west coastline. They are mired in trivial lifestyle issues like, oh, abortion and gay rights and Americans killing and dying in Iraq, while the Republicans serve up meat and potatoes for real Americans, like privatizing Social Security and making damned sure the government knows who is Googling whom in this great country. Just repeat these formulas until a Democrat has been sent into frenzies of self-flagellation, or reduced to tears.
...
...Obviously the party that has lost the White House, both houses of Congress, and now the courts needs some new ideas and new energy. But it seems undeniably true to me—though many deny it—that the Republicans simply play the game better. You're not supposed to say that. At Pundit School they teach you: Always go for the deeper explanation, not the shallower one. Never suggest that people (let alone "the" people) can be duped.

I think Kinsley (perhaps intentionally) fails to acknowledge that everybody knows the Republicans "play the game better." But this might be so in part because Democrats--the activists, at any rate--have a pronounced aversion to "the game." The Alito confirmation is a classic case study of this. Liberals are enraged and despondent at the thought of this toadying careerist, with his decades-long record of right-wing activism and absolute deference to corporate power and the notion of a dictatorial executive, sitting on the Supreme Court until 2030. So they push for a filibuster that's almost certainly doomed to fail--and then the punditariat seizes upon that failure as further confirmation of liberal weakness. (And in the case of Bull Moose, whom I'm expecting to rejoin the Republicans by the end of this year at the outside, it's a sign of character failings as well.)

So the dilemma for Democrats is whether to acquiesce to Alito's confirmation--thus alienating the activists whose time, money and enthusiasm are absolute necessities for any hope of Democratic wins in 2006--or to stage the doomed filibuster attempt and invite the sure mockery of the media boobs.

While the Democrats dither, the Republicans in power continue to transform the country, in its character and the application of its Constitution, into something nearly unrecognizable. This outstanding Newsweek piece details internal Bush administration clashes over the notion of presidential power in wartime. What bothers me most about it is that, yet again, we see dedicated public servants all but run over by the ideologues in power and their functionaries--yet again, mostly operating out of the office of Super Dick Cheney.

Feb. 6, 2006 issue - James Comey, a lanky, 6-foot-8 former prosecutor who looks a little like Jimmy Stewart, resigned as deputy attorney general in the summer of 2005. The press and public hardly noticed. Comey's farewell speech, delivered in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, contained all the predictable, if heartfelt, appreciations. But mixed in among the platitudes was an unusual passage. Comey thanked "people who came to my office, or my home, or called my cell phone late at night, to quietly tell me when I was about to make a mistake; they were the people committed to getting it right—and to doing the right thing—whatever the price. These people," said Comey, "know who they are. Some of them did pay a price for their commitment to right, but they wouldn't have it any other way."
...
These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril; ostracized, some were denied promotions, while others left for more comfortable climes in private law firms and academia. Some went so far as to line up private lawyers in 2004, anticipating that the president's eavesdropping program would draw scrutiny from Congress, if not prosecutors. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men.

Newsweek's take on the story is a lot more optimistic than my own. The last line of the story reminds me of the conclusion of every PowerPuff Girls episode: "...thanks to a few quietly determined lawyers, a healthy debate has at last begun." But let's go back to Kinsley's assertion, that Republicans play the game better. While polling remains ambiguous on public support for wiretapping, the media story is already solidifying: "Americans will trade some civil liberties for greater security against terrorism." The panel on yesterday's Tim Russert show--all right-wing operatives, by the way, aside from the senile David Broder--said so themselves.

Last Tuesday night I saw the author Taylor Branch speak in Philadelphia, supporting the newly released final volume of his three-part Martin Luther King, Jr. biography, At Canaan's Edge. Branch recalled how the civil rights activist Diane Nash took the blame for the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover and others within the government who opposed racial progress and tried to destroy its champions. "Hoover was our fault," Branch remembered Nash saying--and he went on to suggest the same could be said of us with the Bush administration today. I am forced to agree.

Fist-Pumping Rock Meets Advanced Logistics
Annie and I saw Broken Social Scene this past Thursday night at Webster Hall. It was a fantastic show; perhaps the best compliment I can offer is that they played a handful of songs from their latest record that we didn't like based on the studio versions, but loved in the performance. The whole presentation was much more theatrical than your average club-rock gig, with complicated lighting programs for every song and what sometimes looked like dramatic interpretation on the part of the performers.

Of course, it's easier to add such flourishes when you've got literally 15 performers. While the specific number--and the alignment of who was playing what--shifted from song to song, BSS generally used two seated drummers, three or four guitarists, two bass players, and a keyboard. About half the songs also featured a 3-5 person horn section, and then other folks shaking maracas or other percussion instruments.

And this--even more than the great songs and strong performance--is what I find most impressive about Broken Social Scene. I played seriously, or semi-seriously, in three bands between when I was 15 and 21. The first one began as a cover band playing Jewish youth group events and had five or six guys. The latter two were both power trios, featured about 90 percent original songs, and performed out and about in Philadelphia and Providence. My main songwriting partner in both of them was a very good friend whom I saw just about every day. And it was still damn hard to align schedules for sufficient practice and really refine the sound.

Live performances brought a new set of difficulties. You worried about the mix and going out of tune. God forbid someone broke a string; the other two would try and transform into Martin and Lewis, and in any event it would be five minutes before the rock resumed. Now imagine all these problems with more than a dozen players. While there were some complaints late in the show about not hearing themselves in the monitor, and the mix sounded muddy to me on a few (not all) of the songs, by and large the show kept a brisk pace and you could hear it all.

Finally--and I have to admit this was never a major issue for any band I played in as a kid--there's the simple question of how you make any money with 14 or 15 players. The tickets were $25 each; of course I paid another $12 or so above that for the dubious privilege of buying them online, but that's what hapens when Monty Burns owns the means of distribution. Webster Hall's cut was doubtless significant too, and the band seemed less than thrilled with the venue--possibly because of the high cost (the audible techno dance floor below the stage didn't thrill them either; at one point the cranky vocalist stopped in mid-song to bitch about it). Then think about the cost of accommodations, a sound guy--and he has to be good, with all those inputs, and the feeding and boozing of all those performers. I can't imagine how they even meet expenses, much less clear any money.

And yet the songs are tight, the enthusiasm is evident, and these people have been doing this, albeit off and on, for at least five years. They're clearly either freaks or fanatics.

Hey Dems: Use This



Seriously.

Elephantiasis of the Executive (Part I)
I don't think it's attracting all that much attention yet, but the battle lines are being drawn for what I think is a sorely needed debate about the Bush administration's executive power grab in the context of the war on terror. Since Arlen Specter's (probably innocuous) thinking-out-loud about impeachment on one of the Sunday morning blabfests last weekend, we've heard from Al Gore--who gave a blistering speech about the implications of Bush's wiretapping argument--standing alongside libertarian/right-wing nut Bob Barr... and now, some of the leading figures of the Republican movement, including Grover Norquist, David Keane of the American Conservative Union, and Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation.

The banner they've united under--and please take a moment to appreciate the severe cognitive dissonance this is causing me--is "Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances."

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, chairman of PRCB, was joined by fellow conservatives Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR); David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, in urging lawmakers to use NSA hearings to establish a solid foundation for restoring much needed constitutional checks and balances to intelligence law.

"When the Patriot Act was passed shortly after 9-11, the federal government was granted expanded access to Americans' private information," said Barr. "However, federal law still clearly states that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. Yet the federal government overstepped the protections of the Constitution and the plain language of FISA to eavesdrop on Americans' private communication without any judicial checks and without proof that they are involved in terrorism."

These guys, especially Norquist, have spent virtually their whole adult lives (and in some cases going back into childhood) as the unmatched champions of Party over Country. And if you read down further into the press release, it's clear that they are far from spoiling for a fight with the administration that's done so much to advance their dreams of total partisan ascendance. Finally, the group (or at least this release) is silent on the larger questions of executive overreach that I'd like to come back to in a later post. Nonetheless, it's striking and encouraging that there are evidently some principles that the Republican Ultras will stand up for.

On the other side, of course, is the administration; its usual echo chamber on the right (Fox news, the warbloggers, etc), scary think tanks like the Claremont Institute, and a few people who evidently just believe in virtually unlimited executive power. People like the Bull Moose, who excoriates the "Bob Barr Democrats" while comparing George W. Bush to Franklin D. Roosevelt as presidents who "admirably" expanded the power of the office to fight mortal threats to the country.

I often read the Bull Moose as a political/policy thinker of great talents who makes compelling points in the service of ultimately indefensible, sometimes borderline-incoherent arguments. Worse, like all too many bloggers, he overreacts to personal attacks and probably goes further on the page (or screen) than he really intends. In this entry, he's at pains to make distinctions between the "great liberal" FDR, and Bush, who "has unfortunately too often practiced the politics of division and plutocracy." And almost buried within the bombast and attacks on "the impeachment left," he writes, "There should be a reasoned and rational discussion about the balance of security and liberty during wartime." Who can argue with that? Of course, he fails to make the obvious point that "reasoned and rational discussion" is not a very prominent feature of Rovian politics.

All that said, Bull Moose offers one point I find very hard to argue with in light of the larger conversation about checks, balances, and how the Constitution is supposed to work:

If the Moose had his druthers, we would have divided government with different parties controlling the Presidency and the Congress. Neither party should be trusted with complete control over government - genuine checks and balances are a virtue. In fact, America was operating quite well from '96 - '98 before the Delayicans along with the Veep's new buddy, Mr. Barr, advanced impeachment.

As a matter of reality, he's probably right that we must rely on competing party interests, not institutional ones, to ensure the balanced, slow-moving but prudent and consensus-driven government the Founders envisioned. Which is where I'll hopefully pick this up next time. (No promises, of course...)

The Progressive's Paradox
Not much on the blogging front recently, I know. I think part of it is that I don't much feel like writing about politics these days, as it all seems to circle back to one philosophical dilemma I can't seem to figure out.

Though I'm clearly far, far closer to the Democratic mainstream than I am to the Republicans, to the core of my being I resist the idea of being a down-the-line, 100 percent partisan. Sites like Daily Kos increasingly strike me as not much less shrill and reflexive than their counterparts on the right; and like the reactionaries, the loudest and proudest on the left seem to have little notion of the public good that goes beyond "when our side wins." Obviously with some exceptions, there's an intellectual laziness and a willingness to accept received wisdom that I don't think advances the public interest. And the specific issues that most seem to energize "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" aren't the issues I believe to be most important, or even the ones that I think government should concentrate its powers on.

To take a somewhat abstract example, I wonder how the bulk of active Democrats, the sort of people who regularly visit sites like dKos, would respond to this question: if you could snap your fingers and make it so, would you rather pass a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing for all time the legal position decided in Roe v. Wade, or change the country's economic laws and norms such that private sector workers' wages (which have remained largely stagnant since 2000) were guaranteed to rise in some proportion to the profits of their employers (which have skyrocketed)? To me, it's a no-brainer: economic justice is a principle, while Roe is a single Supreme Court ruling (and one of questionable legal reasoning at that). And the goal of distributing prosperity in a more equitable fashion carries demonstrable positive externalities--makes a greater contribution to those overriding national priorities of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--that far outweigh whatever is gained through imposing one view by fiat. And, not less importantly, I don't think you could find a large segment of the population opposed to the notion that when a business venture thrives, its employees should partake in its success.

I'm not saying that reproductive rights aren't worth defending, or that I don't support the outcome of Roe: they are, and I do. But casting a decision in marble is emphatically not the same thing as winning an argument. You can only do that through debate and persuasion. As a progressive--hell, just as a pragmatist thinking about how representative government works in a society committed to pluralism and respectful of diverse opinions--I believe there has to be some process of convincing, not just compelling. It logically follows, then, that nobody has all the answers and no party or faction has a monopoly on vice or virtue; there's no one-size-fits all prescription for governance.

But here's my problem. While I'd like to take issues and elections on a case-by-case basis, and to see policy made from an empirical basis and toward utilitarian ends, the current politically dominant faction in our country is comprehensively partisan and almost totally ideological. The Karl Roves, Grover Norquists, Dick Cheneys, Tom DeLays and Pat Robertsons aren't interested in sober, deliberative, substantive policy debate. They don't believe in responsible governance, and seem to disdain the notion that it's even possible: how else can you appoint so many "Brownies" or staff the Iraq Provisional Authority with former College Republicans and campaign drivers? They aren't at all concerned about the dangers of partisanship: they know exactly what they want and spit on the notion of compromise. (Norquist: "Bipartisanship is date rape.") They are absolutely sure of their own virtue and correctness--a worldview that leads to personal hubris (the Abramoff scandal) and policy disaster (Iraq).

And a large portion of what they do is designed to perpetuate their faction's control on political power. Rove tells the president that "we can run on the Iraq war", flip-flops on the Department of Homeland Security, and draws up vicious attacks on the patriotism, war service and personal integrity of veterans like Max Cleland and John Kerry (and, let's not forget, John McCain). Cheney again and again posits a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. DeLay re-redraws the Texas congressional map, not to foster competitive elections but to maximize the number of solid Republican seats. He and Norquist conceive and implement the K Street Project to more solidly tie the lobbyist community to the Republican Party, ensuring a two-way flow of campaign money and favorable legislation. Robertson and his ilk whip up Christians into a permanent righteous rage by demonizing gays, feminists and secular humanists, and mobilize them to vote a straight Republican ticket.

Now obviously, this Partei Uber Alles worldview doesn't hold with every Republican--though the guys currently in charge certainly seem to want it that way. McCain often has put principle (from fiscal responsibility to the torture issue), and process (campaign finance reform), ahead of party interests. Snowe, Collins and Chafee all seem to vote on issues rather than just follow their leadership (and get viciously attacked for it by rank and file right-wing activists). There are others. I devoutly hope that one day they'll regain the upper hand in their party, restoring the GOP to its one-time vision of fiscal conservatism and healthy distrust of big, intrusive government in all aspects of public life.

But unless and until that happens, how does one resist the current mutant strain of Republicanism? Is the answer to ape its methods and look for our own Roves and Norquists? Do we really want to build a Democratic Noise Machine? If we distrust ideological "solutions" and consider blind partisanship a bad end unto itself, I don't think we can do those things. I'm certain that we can't do them with the total commitment they demand.

So I'm stuck.

Postscript: the site to which I link in the Roe parenthetical above actually has a quotation that sums this up with much greater elegance and brevity than I've managed here:

"The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment."
--Bertrand Russell

Guess that's why he got the big bucks...

DeLay and Delayism
A beautiful day here in Brooklyn just got even brighter:

WASHINGTON - Embattled Rep. Tom DeLay on Saturday abandoned his bid to remain as House majority leader, clearing the way for leadership elections among Republicans eager to shed the taint of scandal.

In a letter to rank-and-file Republicans, DeLay said, "I have always acted in an ethical manner."

At the same time, "I cannot allow our adversaries to divide and distract our attention," the Texas Republican wrote.

DeLay is battling campaign finance charges in Texas and was forced to step aside temporarily as majority leader last fall after he was charged in his home state. He has been trying to clear his name and, until Saturday, resume his leadership role.

In a separate letter to Speaker Dennis Hastert, DeLay said he intends to seek re-election to his House seat in November "while I work to clear my name of the baseless charges leveled against me."

DeLay's about-face came amid growing pressure from fellow Republicans who were concerned about their own political futures in the wake of this past week's guilty pleas by lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
...
DeLay acted hours after a small vanguard of Republicans circulated a petition calling for leadership elections and citing DeLay's legal problems as well as his long ties to Abramoff.
...
"The developments with Abramoff have "brought home the fact that we need not just new leaders but a course correction," Flake said.

Rep. Heather Wilson (news, bio, voting record) of New Mexico, a perennial election-year target of Democrats, said she did not want DeLay to return as majority leader.

And GOP Rep. Jim Ramstad (news, bio, voting record) of Minnesota said, "It's clear that we need to elect a new majority leader to restore the trust and confidence of the American people."

It puts me in mind of the great scene toward the end of "GoodFellas," where Henry Hill is in the police station and the cops are checking out the evidence confiscated from his mistress's apartment. One cop sticks his finger in the caked white goop on a kitchen scale, brings it to his mouth, tastes it, and smiles wolfishly. Off-camera, his partner says to Henry, "Buh-bye, dickhead."

But let's not overdo it just yet. I'm guessing the recent polling that found Democrats with a record 49-36 advantage in generic congressional balloting has something to do with this. Also, it certainly doesn't mean that DeLay won't still be twisting arms and calling shots on key votes, as he continued to do after formally stepping down from his leadership post. (Though one would hope that the money he previously commanded--see below--in doing so has dried up enough to shrivel his powers.) And I'd still feel better about the party's chances to capitalize politically on DeLay's woes if leading Democrats connected the shit policy emanating from Congress to the systematic pay-for-play system that Hot Tub Tom has created (with lots of help from people like Abramoff, Norquist and Ralph Reed) over the last ten-plus years--though this could be my white-boy wonkitude and politically irrelevant reform fetish getting in the way of a dispassionate political judgment. (But then, ya gotta go with what ya know.)

Finally, Josh Marshall--who's been The Man on this story for years now--is absolutely right that a Congress producing "DeLayism without DeLay" really offers little more, aside from aesthetic value, than what we've seen since the mid-'90s. His hope is that the collatoral damage done by these scandals, and their impact in waking up the press that there's a very compelling story here about how our government functions, has rendered this impossible:

One of the great questions of the last decade is how congressional Republicans managed to maintain such unprecedented party discipline. The standard answer is that that's how Tom DeLay earned his nickname 'The Hammer', by squashing anyone who threatened to get out of line. Only that's not really quite how the House GOP Caucus functioned. Notwithstanding the reputation DeLay liked to cultivate, he worked a lot more with Carrots than Sticks. And that means money. Lots and lots and lots of money. A lot of it unaccountable money; a lot of it 'don't ask where it came from' money; but lots and lots of money, and as long as you were there with the caucus on the important votes, a lot of it would be yours.

You can't understand the K Street Project or the sort of slush fund Jack Abramoff was running without understanding that Tom DeLay had built a very effective patronage machine -- one that organized a great deal of the money in the city in the hands of the political leadership.

Most people now think that the Abramoff indictments effectively end any realistic hope for DeLay to reclaim the leadership. So the question is whether you end up with DeLayism without DeLay -- the same money and machine, just under a new boss.

On the one hand, you have acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt, who ants to push DeLay aside and claim the post for himself. But Blunt is a DeLay Man through and through, part of the machine in every way. On the other hand, you've got rebels who just don't think the GOP can get out from under these scandals without a real change in leadership and direction.

That's the fight the Post article talks about. But a big part of what's happening now isn't just which leadership slate takes over the House GOP Caucus. At a deeper level, the Abramoff scandal may do so much damage to the machine DeLay built -- by knocking out key leaders, exposing illegality and 'legal' corruption -- that whomever comes out on top may not be able to run the place with anything like the party discipline DeLay managed during his years in power.

At the risk of getting all metaphyiscal, though, let me suggest another trememndous benefit of DeLay's resignation from the leadership (and hopefully his retirement or defeat as he runs for another term this year). As regular readers know, my great fear throughout the last three years especially, since Republicans retook the Senate and imposed one-party rule with unmatched partisan fury, was that the political immune system the Founders bequeathed was under potentially fatal attack from the virus of Republican hyper-partisanism.

I don't think it's too much to say that the explicit objective of people like Karl Rove, Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist was to subjugate the system of checks and balances designed to produce utilitarian governance--to overthrow the sentiment James Madison expressed in The Federalist No. 51 when he wrote "Ambition must be made to counter ambition." In the one-party context, so long as goods--money, power, prestige--were spread around in an effective way, there was much less risk of a president vetoing legislation that served little purpose other than rewarding interest groups. Or the Senate rejecting judicial appointments made to advance a specific and articulated ideological agenda that might transgress the Constitution. Or, for that matter, the Supreme Court invalidating legislation or placing restrictions on the power of the executive. The whole Republican project was to align partisan ambitions, lubricating differences with a big campaign check here, a sinecure there, a symbolic gesture somewhere else, and a steady stream of policy that rewarded friends and punished enemies.

The ultimate check, though, rests with the voters. Someone evidently made a determination that holding onto DeLay raised an unacceptable risk of eroding the power base that makes "DeLayism," which is as good a name for this whole arrangement as any, possible in the first place. But while the most odious champion of that system has been knocked down (not even out), we have to keep in mind that the assault on Constitutional governance continues.

Ney, DeLay, and Doolittle
Some years ago, I think during the last campaign finance debate, I remember reading how these three names, all leading opponents of reform, seemed so perfectly to sum up the Republican position on pretty much and all positive government action. (Disclaimer: this might have been Josh Marshall's joke, more pithily expressed.) Turns out, though, that in a development Dickens might have scripted, they're all potential targets of the Jack Abramoff investigation. Ney, who's clearly a dead duck, and multiple-trial man DeLay you knew about, but salon.com also notes the involvement of Rep. Doolittle (among many others):

Recent reports suggest a long lineup of members of Congress and family who still face scrutiny, including DeLay and his wife, Christine, Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., and his wife, Julie. Dozens more lawmakers, including leaders from both parties, supported the initiatives of Abramoff's clients and were later rewarded by political contributions. All but six of the top 20 recipients of campaign contributions from Abramoff's clients are Republican.

Of course, this last factoid will be spun differently in publications and by pundits less sympathetic to progressive politics. But I actually believe the bipartisan nature of the scandal, however limited or broad it might be, can work to Democrats' advantage. How better to differentiate themselves from the ruling Republicans than by showing a willingness to root out corruption and punish the guilty whatever the letter after their title and name? Democratic partisans commonly bewail the seeming mystery of why the public generally agrees with them on policy issues, but puts their opponents in office: one reason, I think, is that they don't sufficiently differentiate themselves. Already, polling seems to show that the public doesn't see corruption as a Republican problem; they see it as a government problem. Prominently hanging a couple dirty Democrats out to dry--regardless of how good they might be at fundraising--could really help here in terms of which party deserves to be trusted with power.

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Happy new year to all. You'll notice some new links and sidebar organization here, the first of several changes to the site. It's now possible to link to single posts, in case you want to forward anything of value I stumble onto here, and in terms of content/subject matter I expect my new work role as a contractor/freelancer will influence what we're talking about. Hopefully these changes will be for the best.

One change I'm looking forward to is a new occupant in the New York governor's office as of next January. Today, the lame-duck--and just generally lame--George Pataki gave his final "State of the State" address. For those of you who aren't New Yorkers, Pataki has so totally checked out of his current job that he spent the eve of the NYC transit strike trying to make friends and raise money in New Hampshire; the buffoon actually thinks he can mount a serious campaign for president. In advance of today's address, I was joking with colleagues that Pataki's presidential fever might derange him sufficiently to mention ethanol--the corn-based fuel that Iowa caucus hopefuls always find so compelling--in his speech. Per the Times, so help me, he really did!

The Good Bureaucrat
I'll briefly interrupt my holiday blogging hiatus--as if I ever really need a pretext--to point out a Times editorial today about a rare Republican appointee who has shown professionalism and a loyalty to country above party: Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Of course, he's retiring this week, so this could prove a mere blip in the general pattern of Brownies and Manns.

Often, what Mr. Holtz-Eakin said wasn't what his bosses wanted to hear. He went on record in 2003 saying that President Bush's tax and spending plans would do little or nothing for long-term economic growth. One report issued under his leadership showed that Mr. Bush's tax cuts heavily favored the wealthiest Americans. Another debunked the politically potent but false contention that the estate tax hurts farmers.

By going where the facts and figures led, Mr. Holtz-Eakin also protected his agency, which may be the last bastion of neutral government analysis in Washington. To succeed him, Congressional leaders need a top economist who has a reputation to protect and is a superb number cruncher, fluent communicator of complex issues and good manager.

Given the new raft of obscene tax cuts for Bush Pioneers now on the table, I half-expect them to just synthesize a clone from Arthur Laffer's nose hair or something. Paul Krugman's recent characterization of congressional Republicans as "tax cut zombies"--mindlessly shambling after more, forgetful or indifferent as to why they thought cuts made sense in the first place, much less what their effects might be in the current context of decent macro growth and scary debt accumulation--is all too apt, and I fully expect a (very late) Night of the Living Capital Gains Cuts coming soon to a Capitol near you.