Mourning a Champion of Cities
The legendary urban theorist and social critic Jane Jacobs passed away yesterday in Toronto. She was 89 years old.

In her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," written in 1961, Ms. Jacobs's enormous achievement was to transcend her own withering critique of 20th-century urban planning and propose radically new principles for rebuilding cities.

At a time when both common and inspired wisdom called for bulldozing slums and opening up city space, Ms. Jacobs's prescription was ever more diversity, density and dynamism — in effect, to crowd people and activities together in a joyous urban jumble.
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"Death and Life" made four basic recommendations for creating municipal diversity: 1. A street or district must serve several primary functions. 2. Blocks must be short. 3. Buildings must vary in age, condition and use. 4. Population must be dense.

Ms. Jacobs's thesis was enlarged by her deep, eclectic reading. But most compelling was her description of the everyday life she witnessed from her home above a candy store at 555 Hudson Street, near 11th Street.

In that description, she puts out her garbage, children go to school, the dry cleaner and the barber open their shops, women come out to chat, longshoremen visit the local bar, teenagers return from school and change to go out on dates, and another day is played out. Sometimes, odd things happen: a bagpiper shows up on a February night, and delighted listeners gather around. Whether neighbors or strangers, people are safer because they are almost never alone.

"People who know well such animated city streets will know how it is," Ms. Jacobs wrote. "I am afraid people who do not will always have it a little wrong in their heads, like the old prints of rhinoceroses made from travelers' descriptions of rhinoceroses."

At the risk of sounding all Colbert, I'll admit that I've never read "Death and Life" all the way through. But the core thesis speaks powerfully to me, as I think it does to anyone who's ever been entranced and thrilled by city living. Pretty much since I moved to New York when I was 22, I haven't really wanted to be anywhere else; one of the big questions Annie and I grapple with is how we can afford to stay in Brooklyn if we're ever to actually own a home rather than flushing big bucks down the monthly rent rathole. We choose to be here, to the detriment of our bank accounts but, we think, to the benefit of our souls and our satisfaction.

There's a deep anti-urban bias in both the culture and the policymaking of the U.S. Your average suburban mom will cloud up facially in considering the dangers of city streets, the filth of the transit system, the crowding and crime. Somehow this view, born in ignorance and fear, has trumped the truth of cities as the setting where new art forms are born, new social understandings take root and tolerance spreads as different communities are forced to interact and intermingle, great ideas hatch through never-ending waves of argument and collaboration, and (not least) great fortunes are made and the economic health of the nation is based. As an unabashed lover of cities and a believer in their vitality and potential, Jane Jacobs will be missed, and should be celebrated.

So it's Come to This

From PoliticalWire:

"Katherine DeBrecht, who wrote Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed, is now coming out with a series of conservative books for parents to read to their children. Her next book will take on Hollywood vices, including the pursuit of fame. The idea is to return to family values."

Because I'm evidently the sort of person who can't drive past a car crash without slowing down to look, I clicked through and read the first few pages of the 160 or so user reviews on amazon.com. If you want to do the same, here's the link.

As anyone who's ever read this blog before surely gets, I don't claim to come to this debate unbiased. But the parallel the author and publisher tries to set up--that "Help! Mom!" is only a balancing corrective to what they view as "overtly liberal children's books advocating everything from gay marriage to marijuana use"--is a false one. Those books make their case by connecting positions to core values: you don't judge or define people by their sexuality any more than by their race or religion, but rather by their behavior. And unless I'm very wrong about this, those books (which I haven't read) don't take the approach of demonizing people who oppose gay marriage or drug legalization or whatever. "The Lorax," Dr. Seuss's classic environmentalist allegory, doesn't equate those who recklessly use up natural resources with monsters. (Seuss generally wasn't very big on totemic terror figures in his children's books.)

This one, by the description, really does. All the classic Paranoid Style tropes seem to be present, in more easily digestible form. Maybe today's seven year-old Katharine DeBrecht reader is tomorrow's Ann Coulter follower; maybe when Coulter just comes out and says that liberals should be rounded up and shot, it's more palatable to the child who's already internalized that they're inhuman.

Evolution of "the Internets"
Yeah, we all had a good laugh when Bush flashed his malaprops in the 2004 debates. But a pending sea change in how the online world operates could yet render him a "visionary in error," as Ahmad Chalabi might put it. Legislation is pending in Congress to effectively hand control of the Internet to the same group of telecommunications companies that made out like bandits when Clinton signed the odious Telecommunications Act of 1996. This change really will create different "Internets"--a fast one and a slow one, with preferred and discouraged destinations. And, as was the case ten years ago, both political parties are to blame.

Here's how it's about to go down:

Don’t look now, but the House Commerce Committee next Wednesday is likely to vote to turn control of the Internet over to AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and what’s left of the telecommunications industry. It will be one of those stories the MSM writes about as “little noticed” because they haven’t covered it.

On the surface, it may seem a stretch to think that those companies could control the great, wide, infinite Internet. After all, the incredible diversity of the Net allowed everything Web sites and services of all kinds to exist in perfect harmony. What’s more, they were all delivered to your screen without any interference by the companies that carried the bits to and fro. Until recently, they had to. It was the law. The telephone companies, which carried all of the Web traffic until relatively recently, had to treat all of their calls alike without giving any Web site or service favored treatment over another.

The result was today’s Internet, which developed as a result of billions of dollars of investments, from the largest Internet company that spent millions on software and networking, to the one person with a blog who spent a few hundred dollars on a laptop. The Internet grew into a universal public resource because the telephone and cable companies simply transported the bits.

Last fall, however, the Federal Communications Commission, backed by the U.S. Supreme Court, decided that the high-speed Internet services offered by the cable and telephone companies didn’t fall under that law, the Communications Act. Out the window went the law that treated everyone equally. Now, with broadband, we are in a new game without rules.

Telephone and cable companies own 98% of the high-speed broadband networks the public uses to go online for reading news, shopping, listening to music, posting videos or any of the thousands of other uses developed for the Internet. But that isn’t enough. They want to control what you read, see or hear online. The companies say that they will create premium lanes on the Internet for higher fees, and give preferential access to their own services and those who can afford extra charges. The rest of us will be left to use an inferior version of the Internet.

Admittedly, it hasn’t become a problem yet. But to think it won’t become one is to ignore 100 years of history of anti-competitive behavior by the phone companies.

Emphasis mine. Given the vertical integration of entities that both "control the roads" and own the destinations, all sorts of monkeying with the market will be not only allowed, but encouraged: if Time Warner owns your connectivity and is allowed to speed your trip to the book or music site they own while slowing your connection to their competitor, what do you think they'll do?

For that matter, it's not a stretch to see them widening bandwidth to political sites and candidates they support, and shutting off your trip to those they don't. Candidates who support legislation not in the interests of the telecom companies could see their online fundraising s-l-o-w-e-d d-o-w-n to the point where users just slam the keyboard and give up.

This site adds more detail on how "the gutting of Network Neutrality" will affect all of us end-users. Here are just some of the groups that will be at risk:

• Nonprofits—A charity’s website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can’t pay dominant Internet providers for access to “the fast lane” of Internet service.


• Online purchasers—Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices—distorting your choice as a consumer.


• Small businesses and tele-commuters—When Internet companies like AT&T favor their own services, you won’t be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, Internet phone calls, and software that connects your home computer to your office.


• Parents and retirees—Your choices as a consumer could be controlled by your Internet provider, steering you to their preferred services for online banking, health care information, sending photos, planning vacations, etc.


• Bloggers—Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.

The Internet has been arguably the most positive and revolutionary technological development of the last fifty years, greatly increasing the ability of Americans and everyone else to communicate, shop, organize, work and play in ways unimaginable 20 years ago. We are now looking at the very real prospect of all those gains being washed away and our ability to join and enjoy "communities of affinity" closely controled by some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful corporations. Please click here to find out more and take action.

Lefty Rage
Today's Washington Post includes a five page (well, five-webpage) profile of Maryscott O'Connor, one of the more distinctive voices of the left-wing blogosphere. Though I don't think this was the writer's purpose, the article provides some good insight into both why community sites like Daily Kos and O'Connor's own My Left Wing might soon help to improve the political fortunes of progressive candidates, and why these sites offer potential danger for American politics even if they do help facilitate better electoral outcomes.

I used to spend a lot more time on dKos than I do now, and I remember O'Connor from at least three years ago. She's always stood out for cutting wit, inflammatory writing and just a burning, visceral loathing for Republicans. She also clearly had considerable gifts as a self-promoter: O'Connor is an attractive woman (though the pic in the WaPo piece wouldn't make you think so; this one, posted on her "My Left Wing" site in explicit response to the bad shot in the Post, gives both a more favorable impression and some insight into her monumental self-involvement, and this is the pic I think was her original on dKos) who wasn't shy about posting pictures of herself in her early dKos pieces, and in them she'd often talk about the vicissitudes of her own life--alcoholism, an unwanted pregnancy that ended in abortion, etc--in (sometimes abstract) connection to political arguments. In an emergent community with few visible leaders--Kos himself is not especially telegenic, and has an unfortunate speaking voice that makes him sound like a 12 year-old--O'Connor quickly acquired a cult following online, and that allowed her to start myleftwing.com... where the key word, I think, is "my."

People like O'Connor and, I think, her hero/admirer The Rude Pundit (whom I remember first hearing of in O'Connor's early dKos diaries; he's now on the permanent AIS blogroll, as I find his rants much funnier, less self-serving and more deeply felt than hers) seem like the necessary counterweight to the hyper-partisans on the right. A piece in the current New York Review of Books, breaking down the recently released, Kos-co-authored polemic Crashing the Gates, strongly makes this case. That it's personality-led might be a bit depressing to those of us who distrust cults, but hardly surprising: a lot of Bill O'Reilly's appeal probably is bound up in his personality, and in that sense too O'Connor, Kos and the rest of them are filling a void. Their outrage fuels the activism and determination to engage without which Democrats likely just can't win elections. What I'm pretty sure they can't do, however, is govern. It's not that they don't have well-articulated views on issues: O'Connor's MyLeftWing manifesto probably compares favorably, in depth and detail, to the major party platforms. But the absolute certainty with which she states her views, the incredulous and contemptuous dismissal of all other opinions, does not bode well for the likelihood of these views serving a fractured, divided and often ambivalent public if they ever gain the legitimacy of office.

So far as I know, none of the rising heroes of the online left are running for office: not Markos Moulitsas, not Air America's Randi Rhodes, and certainly not Maryscott O'Connor. This strikes me as a good thing: if they serve to keep more mainstream Democrats honest and focused on core principles, that's fine. But if and when their chosen champions do take office, that's going to present a new set of challenges: stridency might help win elections, but compromise and civility are required traits if the winners are to make their victories worthwhile.

War in Iran?
Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker reports that the Bush administration is actively planning for military action against Iran:

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

American and European intelligence agencies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), agree that Iran is intent on developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But there are widely differing estimates of how long that will take, and whether diplomacy, sanctions, or military action is the best way to prevent it.
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There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change.
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One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”
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“This is much more than a nuclear issue,” one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. “That’s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.”

A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view. “This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war,” he said. The danger, he said, was that “it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear capability.” A military conflict that destabilized the region could also increase the risk of terror: “Hezbollah comes into play,” the adviser said, referring to the terror group that is considered one of the world’s most successful, and which is now a Lebanese political party with strong ties to Iran. “And here comes Al Qaeda.”

The truth is that there are no good options in dealing with Iran, and that war always has unintended consequences--a notion that I worry our country has lost its understanding of since the historic success, in terms of meeting our objectives, of the first Gulf War. But what this looks like to me is a repeat of almost all the mistakes that these armchair warriors made in the runup to Iraq. It's just that this time, the target country has a real military, a government with some measure of popular support (which, in all likelihood, would shoot up to near-universal support upon the first news of American airstrikes), and deep, effective, operational ties to terror groups.

Any attack on Iran at this point will have three sets of consequences that I can see, unrelated to whatever happens in terms of the war itself. (Battlefield outcomes are not something I feel I can discuss with anything like expertise; I'm certain we'd "win," but I'm also sure that casualty levels would make Iraq look like Grenada. The Iranians have a bigger, better-equipped, and much better-led military than did Saddam, and haven't had the burden of sanctions holding them back as Iraq did in the 12 years between Gulf Wars.)

Here they are, in descending order of importance:

1) Economic disaster. The day the first bombs hit, where do you think the price of oil might go? Iran obviously won't sell to us at that point, and even the Saudis wouldn't be able to do too much in opening their reserves (which is the usual method of cushioning a price shock) because their public won't exactly be supportive of the U.S. bombing fellow Muslims. So where do we turn? Venezuela?

(On the other hand, Sen. Stevens probably will get his ANWR drilling. So I guess that's something...)

It's difficult to overstate how bad the economic hit might be. Right now the price of oil is a bit over $67 per barrel. My wife and I recently flew to Italy and back; we were told that oil costs accounted for about $200 each of our tickets. That's with the price in the $60s. Care to speculate what the spillover effects will be when we hit three digits? (Later in Hersh's piece, he cites one government consultant who observes that U.S. strategic reserves would suffice for 60 days, but also notes that those in the oil business were much less optimistic: "one industry expert estimated that the price per barrel would immediately spike, to anywhere from ninety to a hundred dollars per barrel, and could go higher, depending on the duration and scope of the conflict." I can't imagine that this would be a particularly short war; 60 days won't be enough.)

2) Security crackdown. Unlike what was said about Saddam and al Qaeda, Iran's ties to Hezbollah and other terror groups are real. Read Robert Baer; these guys know what they're doing. There will be attacks.

(To be fair, Baer is quoted in Hersh's article and says that Iran's government is "capable of making a bomb, hiding it, and launching it at Israel. They’re apocalyptic Shiites. If you’re sitting in Tel Aviv and you believe they’ve got nukes and missiles—you’ve got to take them out. These guys are nuts, and there’s no reason to back off.” Of course, we're not sitting in Tel Aviv. The distinction between America taking action directly, and supporting Israel in a limited strike, is a very important one; if Israel made the determination that Iran was close to going nuclear and attacked, I would hope and expect the U.S. to show support. Admittedly, a big part of this is that I trust the judgment of the Israelis on these questions vastly more than I do the Bush administration, given respective track records.)

Because of this, events that are now conducted with no or minimal security checks will become a lot more burdensome. Imagine cameras everywhere; imagine going through metal detectors every time you enter an office building, public school, sporting or entertainment event. And then imagine all the damage that will be done to First Amendment rights and civil liberties. All the abuses libertarians and liberals (and principled conservatives) worry about now will be far easier for whoever is in power once a much tighter "security regime" is in place. Again, I grant that safety concerns will necessitate higher scrutiny; I'd just prefer to avoid facing the question if at all possible.

3) More loss of face in the international community. It's bad enough now, but an attack on Iran while diplomatic efforts are still ongoing, in advance of winning support or even grudging recognition of the need from the EU and other powers, will alienate many of the friends we have left. Again, economics is the core issue here: nations thinking about changing their reserve currency from dollar to Euro will have one more reason to do so, and the creditor nations who have financed the Bush debt these last five years might reconsider the wisdom of continuing to do so.

And this is even before we get into the possible consequences of using nuclear weapons--which per Hersh, at least some in the administration are strongly contemplating.

As I said, I don't know what the right action is. The questions are, one, whether all these consequences add up to a worse set of outcomes than those that would follow if Iran got the bomb; and two, what we consider the possibilities of either forestalling Iran from getting the bomb through diplomacy and negotiation, or otherwise pushing for regime change through non-military action. (I concede that one feels like a real longshot, though toward the end of the story Hersh quotes a European intelligence official who observes: "The Iranian economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically... He will benefit politically from American bombing. You can do it, but the results will be worse. ...If there was a charm offensive with Iran, the mullahs would be in trouble in the long run.” If this is a valid read, it should inform our policy.)

It might be that all these consequences would be worth it. Sometimes you have to fight, for reasons of both principle and safety. The question here is whether we yet have to fight, and whether you trust this group of decision-makers to make the decision, based on their judgments to date.

Here's the summary graf, as I see it, from Hersh:

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said that “allowing Iran to have the bomb is not on the table. We cannot have nukes being sent downstream to a terror network. It’s just too dangerous.” He added, “The whole internal debate is on which way to go”—in terms of stopping the Iranian program. It is possible, the adviser said, that Iran will unilaterally renounce its nuclear plans—and forestall the American action. “God may smile on us, but I don’t think so. The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen.”

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.
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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.