The Atlantic Home

Last week I found these graphs which mapped the fluctuations of the Dow against approval ratings for the last six US presidents. In short: The two had almost nothing to do with each other. That's a little surprising, inasmuch as Americans allegedly vote on the economy, but when you think about it, the Dow isn't the most immediate indicator of economic strength. If anything, it's a leading indicator because its value represents what investors expect in the coming months, or years. But when it comes to voting (or approval in a poll) Americans will probably turn to something more immediate and tangible, like unemployment or inflation.

Like gasoline prices!

Aug 31 2009, 11:50AM

Obama And Kennedy: A Contrast In Styles

At his Atlantic Correspondents blog, David Shenk contrasts the political and oratory styles of President Obama and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy:

Kennedy was a lion. It was his great roar of passion that so often won over constituents and colleagues.

Obama is a famously cool cat. While sharing many of Kennedy's political goals, his oratory is built on reason and clarity. He employs low-voltage words that aim to stimulate our frontal cortex, the part of our brain that considers, compares, and calculates what's best for our future. Obama obviously believes deeply in the power of this rational oratory, and with the help of his extraordinary chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau, has turned precision and clarity into an art form.

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Aug 31 2009, 9:41AM

Ridge Backtracks On Politics Of Threat Levels

As former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge begins his media tour, he is trying to put the rabbit back in the hat, as it were. Here's a representative quotation:

Now, Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. "I was never pressured," Ridge said.
The former secretary and Pennsylvania governor, who now heads a security consulting firm called Ridge Global, also said in the interview that:

Here is what he wrote in the book:

"Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level, and was supported by Rumsfeld," he writes. "There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?'"

Aug 31 2009, 8:30AM

Question of the Weekend: A Third-Party Wave?

If Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman wins in New York's 23rd district special election, will we see more conservative third-party challengers in 2010?

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Aug 31 2009, 6:00AM

Question Of The Day: Succeeding Kennedy

Who should succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy as Massachusetts' senator?

Aug 30 2009, 1:27PM

The Sunday Shows In Five Sentences Or Less

Miss the Sunday shows? Here's a quick recap.

1. On This Week, Liz Cheney insisted that waterboarding wasn't torture. On Fox, Dick Cheney said he didn't know whether he'd speak to a prosecutor who asked for an interview with him. (Full transcript here.) He said that even in cases where the EITs went beyond what the Justice Department had authorized, he was OK with it. Cheney also acknowledged that he pushed for military action against Iran during the latter years of the Bush administration. He also said that the CIA was directed not to report about the recently canceled Al Q targeting program until it was operational, but he didn't say whether he had given the order.

2. On CNN's State of the Union, Sen. Orrin Hatch endorsed the idea of appointing Vicki Kennedy to serve as senator from Massachusetts until a special election is held. He said the public option was, for all intents and purposes, not going ot pass.

3. Democrats said the DOJ investigation into the CIA's EIT program was appropriate; Republicans, save for John McCain, said it wasn't.

4. Dianne Feinstein, on torture: "It did produce some information, but there is a great discrepancy, and I think a good deal of error out there in what people are saying it did produce. And we need to straighten that out." McCain: " I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan. I think that these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq who told me that. I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And so -- and I believe that information according to the FBI and others could have been gained through other methods."

5. Meet the Press's full-hour Kennedy tribute.

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Aug 29 2009, 7:30AM

Question Of The Weekend: More Troops To Afghanistan?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, many suspect, will soon ask President Obama to send more troops to Afghanistan, offering a bleak assessment of how the war is going. Should Obama send more troops?

Aug 28 2009, 5:18PM

Re: Searching For Kennedy--McCain

A follow-up to Bruce Reed's question of whether Republicans can produce the next Ted Kennedy: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker proposed John McCain could be the one, a possibility Reed dismisses by saying the GOP's base hasn't tolerated McCain's bipartisanship in the past. Political Animal's Steve Benen doesn't buy it, not after the partisanship of the 2008 election, and points out that McCain's list of legislative feats isn't as long, either.

Aug 28 2009, 4:18PM

Do Presidential Approval Ratings Follow the Dow?

Not really! That's the conclusion you'd have to draw from a new Gallup poll today (via Economix). Take a look at these graphs and tell me if you see any kind of relationship between Dow fluctuations and presidential approval ratings. I certainly don't.

Aug 28 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: A Break From Health Care

This week has provided a break from news about health care. Remembrances of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy aside, activity out of Washington has been mostly national security related. Will this respite from the health care frenzy help or hurt President Obama's efforts to pass reforms?

Aug 27 2009, 5:20PM

Question Of The Day, Answered

Our question for today was, using SEIU as an example, whether it's too political to call for passage of health care in the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's name. Commenters didn't seem to think it out of line. These two responses stuck out:

Aug 27 2009, 4:12PM

Campaigns Of 2009 and 2010: Some Early Talking Points

Here's what I think an analyst can safely say about the major campaigns of 2009 and 2010 right now... at such a very early time on the political calendar.

1. In Virginia, Republican Attorney General Bob McDonnell has run a pitch-perfect gubernatorial campaign, focusing almost entirely on the economy, eschewing cultural issue propaganda, touting his ties to Northern Virginia, not being scary, portraying his opponent, Creigh Deeds, as a tax-and-spend Democrat. McDonnell isn't attacking Barack Obama or Democrats; he's finessed small symbolic issues -- like whether to take a pay cut -- quite well. Deeds's road bends uphill: he says a lot of the right things, he's the right type of Democrat -- rural and centrist -- but he's not terribly charismatic, and his message task is harder: he's got to convince people that Bob McDonnell's friendly visage masks a harshly partisan, conservative soul. (Deeds is running an ad comparing McDonnell to George W. Bush.) Where's this race now? For eight years, Democrats have accumulated political power in Virginia. Now they run the Congress and hold the Presidency. McDonnell is basing his campaign on the theory that (a) Virginia is naturally an extremely competitive state; independents are skeptical of one-party government, particularly amid a recession; that Barack Obama didn't win because a whole bunch of liberals suddenly sprang to life from the lawns of Loudoun or Fairfax counties. Now -- all is not lost for the Democrats. Deeds is trying to emulate the Tim Kaine electoral coalition, with the big difference being that Kaine benefited from the groundwork laid by Mark Warner, his predecessor, and Deeds can't expect to much of a benefit from Kaine's coattails. Deeds is more conservative on cultural issues than his reputation would suggest, and that could help him in some areas. He will need Barack Obama to be more popular than he currently is, and Deeds will need to replicate his 2005 success among black voters. (It did not help matters when Doug Wilder, the former Democratic governor, refused to endorse him.)

Aug 27 2009, 6:00AM

Question Of The Day: Remembering Kennedy With Politics

Yesterday, SEIU called on Congress to pass health care to honor the life of Sen. Edward Kennedy. Was this statement on his death too political, or would Kennedy have wanted it that way?

Aug 26 2009, 12:47PM

Kennedy's Funeral Plans

More details when they become available, but Sen. Kennedy's body will travel by boat, up the coast to the JFK Library site in Boston, and then there'll be a funeral at a Catholic Church in the city; Kennedy may -- or may not -- lie in state at the Capitol in Washington. As a Korean war veteran and a U.S. senator, he will be buried, near his siblings, at Arlington National Cemetery.

Aug 26 2009, 10:40AM

Kennedy, Remembered

National Journal has compiled about 40 brief remembrances of Sen. Edward Kennedy from those who knew him--fellow lawmakers, former staffers, and past administration officials. Some highlights: former Sen. Birch Bayh recalls about pulling Kennedy from a plane crash in 1964 and carrying him away from the wreckage, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) says Kennedy was the first to call when his son was born in 1999, and former spokesman Jim Manley says "the man devoured CRS [Congressional Research Service] reports like most people read a cheap novel during August break at the beach."

Aug 26 2009, 9:51AM

SEIU: Honor Kennedy By Passing Health Care

The Service Employees International Union is calling on Congress to honor Sen. Edward Kennedy by passing health care reform. Kennedy, beloved by unions as a staunch ally of working-class liberals as top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, held health care as one of his highest priorities. Just six days ago, in what The Boston Globe described as "a poignant acknowledgment of his mortality at a critical time in the national health care debate," Kennedy asked the governor, state Senate president and House speaker to change the state's succession law to guarantee a quick appointment should he die, giving Massachusetts and Democrats nationwide a critical "yea" on health care reform, should legislation come to a vote.

Aug 26 2009, 9:38AM

Statement From Kennedy's Publisher

Before Sen. Edward Kennedy died, he managed to finish his autobiography, True Compass, which will be published by the Hachette Book Group in September 14, in less than three weeks. (A biography, excerpts of which were published in Vanity Fair in June, is also pending from Edward Klein.) Today, Hachette released the following statement on Kennedy:

Aug 26 2009, 6:00AM

Question Of The Day: Rate Obama On National Security

President Obama has taken interrogations out of the CIA's hands, his attorney general is getting ready to consider prosecutions of interrogators who overstepped the bounds of Bush-era legal opinions, and the White House is reviewing a review of the state secrets privilege. How do you evaluate Obama's handling of the national security policies of his predecessor?

Aug 26 2009, 1:39AM

Sen. Ted Kennedy Is Dead

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who died Tuesday night at the age of 77, lived an almost incomprehensible life. He was the youngest American Kennedy of that great generation; the last Kennedy brother, surviving his sister Eunice by just a week. With a remarkable penchant for self-renewal, he persevered through the brutal political assassination of two brothers, devastating illnesses and deaths of friends and siblings, a brush with mortality, a colossal lapse in judgment that ended in the death of another human being, a failed presidential bid, divorce -- and then, in later life, after marrying his wife Vicki in 1992, a tempering so profound that he became the conscience of the U.S. Senate and its most powerful, most respected member. A rich playboy in his prime, he became a champion of the people he called the most "humble members of society."

Kennedy will be remembered everywhere as the "liberal lion," and he remained polarizing to many on the right -- check your Twitter feed if you've got doubts -- but that appellation doesn't do justice to his final incarnation: so committed was he to principles that he was unafraid to hand political victories to Republican presidents on immigration and education. The later Kennedy was a liberal, but his legislative mien resisted definition. In a statement tonight, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah proudly listed eleven bills that he cosponsored with Kennedy.

It must be remember that Kennedy was a staunch and early critic of the war against Iraq when few of his colleagues would join him. "My vote against this misbegotten war was the best vote that I have cast since I was elected in 1962," he said in 2007. (It was for this reason he was unusually receptive to the charms of a new colleague, Barack Obama, who had also opposed the war.)

Kennedy was a regular and vocal opponent of the Bush Administration's way of balancing security and civil liberties. He opposed conservative judicial nominees and played a leading role in the defeat of Robert Bork. His stamp is on legislation as diverse as the founding catechisms of Medicare and the Americans with Disabilities Act, AmericaCorps, No Child Left Behind and the Ryan White AIDS Act, mental health parity, the State-Children's Health Insurance Program, raising the minimum wage, the government program that extends health insurance for the unemployed and more. He did more than any senator in modern memory to advance the cause of civil rights -- he was one of the few senators to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act --, but he called health care the "greatest cause" of his life.

In person, he was strikingly humble for a guy who had done so much and been through much. He was probably more beloved by his staffers than any other senator; he remembered birthdays, visited sick relatives, always was ready with gifts for children, and his annual holiday party each year, where he dressed up as Santa, was quite a sight to behold. Many of his staffers now serve President Obama, including Gregory Craig, who advised Kennedy for years on national security and civil rights.

Kennedy liked to quote Tennyson's Ulysses, and like the protagonist of the poem, Kennedy detested idleness and loved to move. He spoke often about the journeys of heroes -- Tennyson phrase -- "strong in will," striving, seeking, never yielding. His most famous turn of phrase flows from that sentiment. The final line of his speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention was an exhortation: For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Kennedy did not live to see the Senate pass universal health care reform, a goal to which he had devoted many of his later years. (His imprint lives on in Massachusetts, where it was his political brokering that brought Republicans and Democrats together to guarantee insurance for all.)

So will Democrats use Kennedy's death as a rallying cry to unite and pass health care reform? It is hard to tell whether his death -- inevitable as it has seemed -- is priced in to the politics of the debate so far. But Orrin Hatch, and other Republicans who worked with Kennedy, might be in a more expansive mood to compromise. Kennedy would probably encourage such speculation and not find it unseemly -- so important to him was the goal of getting something done, this year, under this president.

Some of my favorite Kennedy moments: his 1994 debate against Mitt Romney, calling Romney "multiple choice" on abortion. .... his 2008 Democratic National Convention speech.... his eulogy for his brother Bobby...on Iraq....his endorsement of Barack Obama. ... the dream shall never die....

Aug 25 2009, 5:45PM

The Case For An Interrogations Law

At Salon, Juan Cole makes the case for why Congress should step in and set in stone what can and what can't be done in the interrogation of detainees. It's a lack of such a law already that allowed the Bush-era legal interpretations to take hold, Cole says. He writes:

...one of the interrogators is said to have feared prosecution before the World Court in the Hague. But why weren't they afraid of prosecution in U.S. courts? When did the U.S. go from having, in the Bill of Rights, among the most advanced human rights laws in the world to being a gulag backwater where it is only a trip to Holland that American torturers fear?...

Aug 25 2009, 3:55PM

State Secrets Review Now At White House

According to an administration official, the Department of Justice has finally completed its long-awaited review of the state secrets privilege and its use by the Bush administration. But the schedule for its public release is still TBD, as is what policy the president prefers.

The privilege, generally recognized by the courts, allows the executive branch to shield classified information from disclosure in criminal and civil trials without judicial review. It was invoked by the Bush administration regularly to prevent the disclosure of information about sensitive intelligence and national security programs, often resulting in the dismissal of cases before a formal exchange of evidence began. During the campaign, and at a press conference in April, Obama said that he wanted to use the privilege more narrowly, only challenging specific evidence, and did not believe that the privilege should be used to pre-emptively end cases.

Aug 25 2009, 3:38PM

An Opening For Obama With North Korea?

North Korea is softening predictably, Bill Powell writes: after breaking its pledge to halt nuclear development and firing more rockets, Kim Jong Il is reaching out both to South Korea and to Washington after the visit of former President Bill Clinton. The North and South will hold talks over reunification of families split by the border since 1953, and Pyongyang wants to re-enter talks about its nuclear program--but only with the U.S., not other participants of the six-party talks.

Aug 25 2009, 1:54PM

Ex-Clinton Campaign Finance Chief Is Indicted For Bank Fraud

The Justice Department today indicted Hassan Nemazzee, chairman of a New York investment bank and former finance chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, on charges of bank fraud. According to government officials, Nemazzee conspired to defraud Citigroup out of $74 million by claiming loan collateral he did not have. According to the indictment, accounts that Nemazzee showed to Citigroup were fictitious or had been closed years earlier. When Citigroup employees tried to verify the accounts, they were routed to a telephone number that Nemazee himself controlled. The one count of bank fraud carries a maximum 30-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $1 million. The alleged fraud took place after the presidential campaign.

Aug 25 2009, 1:20PM

Why Hasn't the Glenn Beck Boycott Hurt Fox News?

by Conor Clarke

This Glenn Beck boycott is fascinating. I wrote a post for Andrew Sullivan on the substance of the matter last week, and I think it holds up okay. Let me just say that I continue to be amazed that some people think there is a free speech issue here. It seems to me that the right to free speech does not give you the right to massive corporate underwriting. Glenn Beck can defend "the white culture" and call Obama a "racist" in poverty and in private.

What I'm interested now is the economics of the boycott. Thirty-six companies have apparently signed on. And while it appears that some of them never advertised with Beck in the first place (oops), many if not most of them did. To which Fox responds:

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Aug 25 2009, 12:09PM

Don't Call It A Coincidence

Was it a coincidence that, on the day that the Central Intelligence Agency released more of an unredacted inspectors general report on torture and interrogation, on the day that the Attorney General decided to review the interrogation records for possible prosecution, on the day when memos requested by Vice President Cheney highlighting the alleged effectiveness of the "EIT" were made public, that the White House decided to leak news, on Sunday, to several newspapers about its new, high-value terrorist interrogation group? Not at all. "We knew that with everything else happening, we wanted to show that the President was on top of the situation." an administration official conceded last night. The idea wasn't so much to distract journalists from reporting the sensational CIA news; it was more to foster an impression that the new administration is actively working on the problems left to them by the last administration.

Aug 25 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: What If Daschle Were In Charge?

Where would health care be right now if Tom Daschle were in charge of shepherding it through Congress?

Aug 24 2009, 5:20PM

CIA IG: Agency Faces Major Legal Problems In Future

Perhaps Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman didn't read Attorney General Eric Holder's statement about his decision to review CIA interrogations today for possible future prosecution. Lieberman allowed that while CIA officers "must of course live within the law" they must also be free to "do their dangerous and critical jobs without worrying that years from now, a future Attorney General will authorize a criminal investigation of them for behavior that a previous Attorney General concluded was legal and authorized."

Aug 24 2009, 4:41PM

Poll: The CIA Investigation

Is Attorney General Eric Holder's investigation into CIA interrogations...(surveys)

Aug 24 2009, 2:05PM

GOP Attack On New Interrogation Task Force

The frame with which Republicans might try to attack the administration for its new high-value detainee task force is kind of unusual. In a statement, Sen. Kit Bond, a long-time member of the intelligence committee, accuses the administration of hurting morale at CIA by putting the FBI and the NSC in charge of a select group of detainees. Then he says this: "Chrysler and Citigroup apparently weren't enough; now the White House is taking over the CIA and how we interrogate Usama bin Laden. Even the Democrats' favorite boogeyman Dick Cheney's did not take over terrorist interrogations." (This is one reason why the White House tried to insist today that the NSC wouldn't meddle in operational details, but it's hard to figure out where operations begin and policy ends.) So -- basically -- the Bond-led attack is that the White House is trying to consolidate control over everything in American life, even though, from the perspective of CIA and, probably, many Republicans, the Obama HIG is a welcome development.

Aug 24 2009, 2:00PM

The Character Of The Insurgency In Iraq

Buried in a recent story about the conditions at U.S. detention facilities in Iraq was a nugget from a poll conducted of prisoners that casts some light on why the Obama administration wants to de-emphasize the Islamic features of the war against terrorism. 70% of those detained told officials that they did not regularly attend mosques before being captured. More than 35% said they had never been inside of a mosque. Accounting for evaluator bias -- perhaps some prisoners thought it would be in their best interests not to talk about their religious affiliation -- it suggests a secular character to those who committ violent acts against U.S. troops in Iraq.

Aug 24 2009, 1:55PM

Who Not To Play Golf With

President Obama really must not poll his vacation plans. UBS Americas chairman Robert Wolf is very close to the President, as one of the first major NYCers to sign-up in late 2006 for the presidential campaign and a longtime Democratic donor, but when you're fighting the tag as an out-of-touch protector of Wall Street and bank bailouts, playing golf on Martha's Vineyard with a senior representative of a company that just agreed to turn over the names of 4.500 American tax-cheats is ... clearly an interesting way of putting everything into perspective.

Aug 24 2009, 12:47PM

Panetta's Message To CIA Workforce

Here's a memo that CIA director Leon Panetta sent to members of the CIA's workforce this morning about the expected release, later today, of an unredacted version of the CIA's inspector general report on interrogations.

Aug 23 2009, 2:33PM

The Sunday Shows In Seven Sentences Or Less

1. Sen Kent Conrad, (D-ND), the chairman of the budget committee, said that reconciliation for health care reform wouldn't work very well. (He acknowledged that it was an "option.") He repeated his contention that Democrats lacked 60 votes for a public option. "It is very unlikely that the health care bill will be split in two," he said on Face the Nation. On Meet the Press, Sen, Chuck Schumer called the public option "essential" for health insurance reform.

2. On CNN's State of the Nation with John King, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), suggested the President Obama put health care on the backburner for now and wait until the recession ends before trying to achieve universal coverage. Lieberman wants to postpone the coverage extension and pass a bill with the insurance reforms.

3. Sen John McCain praised President Obama's approach to Iraq and Afghanistan, but he said he worried that Gen. Stanley McChrystal's ability to propose troop increases would be stifled by public pressure. He said that Sen. Susan Collins's blog post about potential troops increases -- (a low-risk 15,000 more; medium risk 25,000 more; high-risk 45,000 more) had jeopardized McChrystal's decision-making process. (Admiral Mike Mullen insisted that McChrystal hadn't yet asked for any more troops.)

4. Sen. Orrin Hatch incorrectly claimed that reconciliation had been rarely used, and Meet the Press's David Gregory found that Hatch misstated the number of people that the Congressional Budget Office claims would move to a public option if it were part of the bill. Sen. Grassley now admits that there are no death panels in the health care bill but defended his words on the subject because he said he needed to educate his constituents. McCain called Sarah Palin's death panel interpretation legitimate.

5. U.S. policymakers seemed to be in no mood to describe the Afghanistan election as anything other than a success. And U.S. policymakers and generals seemed to have trouble describing our national interest in the region.

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Aug 21 2009, 1:50PM

Friday Moral Quandary: Justice

Aug 21 2009, 11:52AM

Your Views: Why Obama's Poll Numbers Tanked

From my Twitter panel, 140-word explanations of President Obama's drop in the polls. The respondents are liberal, conservative and other.

Obama's numbers are down because people are uncertain about (and being lied to about) health care reform. To raise them, he needs to pass a good bill and have it take effect and make a difference in lives (might take a while). (@marginofterror)

He's lost positive messaging. He speaks ill of those who oppose him, which translates to speaking ill of real voters. (@maybeetweet)

Aug 21 2009, 10:26AM

Palin Takes On... Tort Reform

In her latest Facebook post, ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin claims health care reform won't be worth the name unless it includes medical malpractice reform, too.

As Governor of Alaska, I learned a little bit about being a target for frivolous suits and complaints (Please, do I really need to footnote that?). I went my whole life without needing a lawyer on speed-dial, but all that changes when you become a target for opportunists and people with no scruples. Our nation's health care providers have been the targets of similar opportunists for years, and they too have found themselves subjected to false, frivolous, and baseless claims. To quote a former president, "I feel your pain."

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Aug 21 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: Cash For Clunkers Comes To An End

Cash for clunkers will end Monday. The program was wildly popular, largely because it involved free money. Did cash for clunkers prove that Americans are comfortable with government spending when they reap the rewards right away?

Aug 20 2009, 5:30PM

Liberals And Gut Hatred, Or, Why I'm Sorry I Wrote What I Wrote

Both Glenn Greenwald and Marcy Wheeler have written posts eviscerating me for contending that Bush-hatred, not anything else, drove skepticism among liberals about the terrorist threat warnings. They've both written good posts, really; lawyerly, passionate and persuasive, over the top, at times, but they've given me a lot to think about. (One post is better than the other, but I won't say which one.)

They haven't changed my mind, but they've certainly modified my conclusion. I didn't spend enough time thinking about what I wanted to say. Incidentally, if I am a symbol of everything that is wrong in journalism, then I suggest they are both giving me WAY too much credit.

Aug 20 2009, 1:00PM

With Rubio, Conservatives Can Hope

And indeed they do: Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio, who's running against the moderate Gov. Charlie Crist in a Republican primary that has drawn the attention of conservatives at the national level, will grace the cover of National Review's September issue, for a piece by John J. Miller entitled "Yes, He Can." Rubio has become a source of hope for conservatives who want to see the moderate, stimulus-embracing element of their party expunged. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee and is charged with winning Senate races for the GOP in 2010, caught some flak for endorsing Crist over the conservative upstart Rubio. In short, Crist vs. Rubio, to some conservatives, is a referendum on the future of the party. Whether that's fair, given that Rubio is a huge underdog, is another question. Florida political blog PrimeBuzz's Adam Smith proposes that the National Review spotlight will help Rubio raise some national money from grassroots conservatives. He'll need it: in the most recent polling, Crist leads Rubio 55 percent to 26 percent. The cover story should, at least, help Rubio's name ID.

Aug 20 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: Would Co-Ops Change Health Care?

Do you think creating health insurance co-ops with government seed money would have much effect on the insurance market, or, as liberals like Rep. Raul Grijallva say, would a co-op plan essentially mean the current system stays intact?

Aug 20 2009, 6:09AM

How Not To Judge The Afghanistan Elections

In Afghanistan, the election's legitimacy matters. But Western brains, in figuring out how to judge the election, should first decide whether, by Western standards, it's worth making a judgment. Dozens of our country's best analysts are in the country, watching. Others are following a well-developed Twitter stream. By Western standards, the election was a shanda: tens of thousands were denied the vote in Taliban controlled provinces, suicide bombers clashed with police officers on the streets of Kabul, police officers were killed by explosions in at least two cities, precincts were shut down for hours in many places, voters literally had to find their way through minefields to vote in Helmand, a Western group called the entire thing a fraud, etc. etc. etc.

If Western perception influences Afghan perception, it'll be a disaster for whoever wins. What standard Afghans use to deem the election as legitimate -- that's another story. In the United States, sporadic reports of irregularities mark a successful election experience. In Afghanistan, so long as the violence remains sporadic, so long as the lines of women at polling places are long (even though they vote in a different area than men), so long as the election authority pronounces relative calm and quiet, so long as sustained violence appears limited to a few places in Northern Afghanistan -- it seems as if, by the standards of an election in a war zone, it went as well as an Afghan might expect.

At the same time, we shouldn't romanticize the election, either. It'll be tempting -- purple thumbs, women casting ballots, citizens braving fears of attacks. But in this case, it's really probably best to wait and see whether there was evidence of widespread fraud when the results are released tomorrow, and if so, how Afghans react to it. (What does widespread fraud mean in that country versus this one? I don't know.)

Who's going to win? There seems to be an expectation that President Karzai will face Dr. Abudallah Abdullah in a run-off on October 1. The former foreign minister, Abdullah is one of 39 presidential candidates. Best known to the world as the man who brought the U.S. government and the Northern Alliance together after 9/11, Abdullah is an ophthalmologist by training and diplomat by trade. After Karzai, Abdullah's main rival is Ashraf Ghani, a well-regarded former government finance minister whose accomplishments have tangibly helped Afghanistan grow.
Abdullah's campaign website speaks of hope and change -- universal themes, of course, but associated in this country with President Obama. Realistically, even if he beats Karzai in a run-off, he'll face a bureaucracy that is weak, fractious and might not be loyal. To foreign ears, Abdullah's promise to negotiate with the Taliban is quite interesting, but Americans want to know more, including how Abdullah (with help, one assumes, from NATO) will determine the good Taliban from the bad Taliban.

Aug 19 2009, 9:25PM

Twittering All Night Long

The Atlantic twitters. Boy, do we Twitter! @marcambinder is me, Mattizcoop is Matthew Cooper, @goldberg3000 is Jeff Goldberg, @1bobcohn is Bob Cohn, @jamesgibney is James Gibney, @jbennet is James Bennet,@SageStossel is Sage Stossel, SStossel is Scott Stossel, Ckummer is Corby Kummer, Gcaw is Graeme Wood, Clemtan is Clement Tan, and RecessionRoadie is Cristina Davidson

Aug 19 2009, 4:52PM

Lies, And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Foreign Policy has an extensive list of lies that have been told in the health care debate. Journalists are usually pretty hesitant to call people "liars"; there's always a chance it was a misunderstanding, or that the journalist's own fact-checking is wrong. They usually prefer terms like "misinformation" or "confusion," partly because "lie" and "liar" assign intent, when it could be the product of bad research, naive use of someone else's talking points, or just a mistake. But Foreign Policy's Annie Lowrey and Michael Wilkerson don't hold back, and, under their critical gaze, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Patients United Now, Howard Dean, the Club for Growth, the RNC, and "a slew of U.S. presidents, politicians, journalists, and everyday citizens" (when it comes to the claim that the U.S. has the best health care in the world) are not spared that harshest of truth-related labels.

Aug 19 2009, 3:13PM

Huckabee: I'm Not Like Pelosi

Mike Huckabee fired off some more missiles at President Obama's Israel policy today in a post to his PAC's website, posted from Israel as Huckabee is still there, highlighting Obama's policies and his own critiques of them. He basically calls Obama a hypocrite for telling AIPAC in 2007 that no American president should ever dictate terms to Israel and again, in another address to AIPAC in 2008, condemning new settlements but not foreshadowing his opposition to expansion of existing ones. What's most curious about Huckabee's post, though, is that he goes out of his way, for four of his opening paragraphs, to rebuff comparisons between his trip to Israel and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syrian in 2007, taken against the wishes of President Bush and viewed by many as a move to undermine the administration.

Aug 19 2009, 12:25PM

Is Coal Getting Desperate?

It is, according to Lisa Margonelli at her Atlantic Correspondents blog, pointing to yesterday's Wall Street Journal report that a clean coal coalition's subcontracted "grassroots/grasstops" firm sent fraudulent letters to members of Congress (purporting to be from senior centers, but actually forged, according to Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman) about the energy reform/cap-and-trade legislation passed by the House and awaiting action in the Senate. The energy bill does face some real dangers in the Senate: four moderate Democrats recently suggested breaking it into pieces, and it's expected to change somewhat in the upper chamber. The Senate may be a tougher place to enact emissions legislation, partly because so many states produce coal, and they each have two senators...at least that's one basic theory.

Comments (14)

Aug 19 2009, 10:57AM

Novak's Public Service

The Examiner's Timothy P. Carney says it was "exposing the power game." "Novak's reporting unearthed how politicians often answer to well-connected lobbyists and serve their own interests rather than the needs of the country," Carney writes. "This was an education for me and for his readers." Coincidentally, that's the direction political journalism has taken recently; see Politico's mission statement/memo, in which the paper says "a Politico story works THE POWER EQUATION...WHO is trying to GET of HOARD it?" Novak did the same, but with fewer caps.

Aug 19 2009, 10:01AM

Q & A On Cooperatives: Julius Hobson

Only Senate Democrats seem to be moving toward the idea of providing seed money to form health care cooperatives as an alternative to a government option in the new health insurance exchange. Republicans call it "public option" lite, while the public option forces -- most of whom were single-payer advocates and then retrenched to support the public option -- don't buy it. Part of the problem is that no one understands how a cooperative might work. To shed some light on the politics and the policy, I spoke to Julius Hobson, a former top lobbyist for the American Medical Association and now a policy adviser at Bryan Cave, LLC in Washington. (The firm works with a variety of health care clients.)

As I understand it, the prevailing theory of cooperatives would essentially create quasi-life insurance companies that can enter into deals with providers. Government would provide start-up money, essentially, like venture capital. Is the difference between a "strong" cooperative and a "weak" cooperative simply a matter of scale? In other words -- the cooperative system will be too small unless the cooperatives are of a certain size...with a certain number of people buying into them, and encompassing all types of medical services.

I think it's going to have to be the size. And that's one of the questions I have about the cooperative is: can it acquire enough people to purchase services on the scale that makes it economical? And that part isn't clear to me. The federal government would have to provide seed money. The question is: how much, and how long would that last? Are states such as Montana, and I'm talking people wise, not geography wise, Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota, are they large enough? The answer to that is, probably not. One of the conflicts is that insurance is regulated by states. For a cooperative to work, it would need to be regional. So, who's the regulator? Is the federal government going to be the regulator? If the federal government puts up seed money, would it be willing to let the states regulate? Maybe they can [get] insurance companies to agree to national regulation of health insurance, but I doubt that. One other part to that is, assuming you want the cooperative to be competitive, can it get large enough? If you divide Pennsylvania right in half, you've got two [Blue Cross, Blue Shield companies] that control over 90% of the market. Tell me how a cooperative can compete with that.

Aug 19 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: Rejecting A Co-op Plan

Liberal Democrats in Congress and in labor are vowing to reject any health care bill that doesn't have a public option. Do they pose a serious threat to the passage of health care reform?

Comments (41)

Aug 18 2009, 3:23PM

Obama: Not Machiavellian Enough?

Michael Lind of Salon suggests President Obama could have taken a page from The Prince in approaching health care reform. Lind pulls a quote from Machiavelli that's fantastically relevant, given the problems Obama is running into at the moment:

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it. Thus it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger.

Aug 18 2009, 2:37PM

Is The Stimulus Helping Ordinary Americans?

by Conor Clarke

USA Today had a new poll out yesterday that found, among other things, that only 18% of the country says the Obama administration's stimulus "has done anything to help improve their personal situation." And I thought Matt Yglesias made a good point about this: The most widely dispersed elements of the stimulus -- the almost $300 billion in tax cuts, distributed to far more than 18% of the population -- were designed to be inconspicuous. Consumers were not supposed to realize what the tax rebate portion of the stimulus was going to "improve their personal situation."

Comments (14)

Aug 18 2009, 1:09PM

Robert Novak Dies

Conservative columnist Robert Novak died this morning after a battle with brain cancer, reports the Chicago Sun-Times, for which he has been a columnist since 1966. The Washington Post has a lengthy piece detailing the conservative columnist's national prominence. Perhaps what will be missed most about Novak, even more than his journalistic skill or the weight of his commentary, is his demeanor: the scowling "prince of darkness" antithesized the exuberance and chumminess that have become standards of TV news and commentary today. With Novak gone, who is left to scowl?

Aug 18 2009, 12:00PM

The White House - PhRMA Deal: What Really Happened?

I've been trying to peel back some of the spin layers and figure out whether there really was a secret deal to between the White House and PhRMA that would have perpetually protected drug makers from the rapacious reach of Congressional Democrats. The notion that an iron-clad, inked deal existed is a convenient bit of history for the pharmaceutical industry and "drafts" of the "deal" are circulating everywhere.

For Democrats disillusioned with the administration, the "deal" was the last straw. Dan Froomkin, writing at the Huffington Post, calls it "the Obama White House's first really major credibility crisis." He accused White House press secretary Robert Gibbs of "lying" because Gibbs denied there was a deal, albeit in "conflicting" ways, and the "evidence for [a deal] is considerable."

CBS News's Sheryl Attkisson last week revealed a key point, which is that PhRMA agrees that the White House never agreed to drop its support for pursuing Medicare-negotiated drug pricing and drug reimportation.

However, it's also clear that the White House was keen on negotiating with PhRMA -- and that the negotiations involved discussions about ways to limit the ramifications that Congress' health care bills would have on the companies.

So when is a deal really a deal?

The White House agreed, along with Sen. Max Baucus, to not _push_ for the inclusion of Medicare-bulk drug pricing as part of the health care bill itself. (A White House spokesman, Dan Pfeiffer, has admitted this.)

Further, the White House told PhRMA it would not urge House members to rewrite the part of the Medicare Part D expansion that made 6 million Medicaid recipients eligible for the new Medicare benefit. It's not clear how well Baucus briefed other members of the Finance Committee, who denied knowledge of a "deal." Indeed, Baucus could have only been speaking for himself as chairman; he would not use his powers to persuade other Democrats to adopt anti-PhRMA positions as part of the health are bill.

The White House's denials about a deal were broad. Senior Adviser David Axelrod told members of Congress that there was no deal to change the White House's position on these issues. At the same time, Jim Messina, the White House deputy chief of staff (and former Baucus CoS) who was the point person for the negotiations, made it clear to senators that the president had authorized him to try and secure PhRMA's support for the overall legislation, and that Baucus had agreed (two months ago) to a tactical retreat: the Finance Committee wouldn't pursue these issues RIGHT NOW. But it was made clear to PhRMA that, post-health care reform, the White House was no longer bound by the deal. A PhRMA source confirms that PhRMA understood this -- and understood as early as 6/22, when news of the deal was first announced.

Aug 18 2009, 10:35AM

Birther Scrutiny: Obama's MySpace Page

The birther meme has died down considerably, but it's always interesting to see what people are willing to examine for birtheristic ends. This time, it's President Obama's MySpace page, which says Obama is 52...meaning he would have been born in Hawaii before it was a state. It's an exclusive at WorldNetDaily. Sort of makes Obama sound like a Cuban baseball player...and there's actually some similarity there. Unless he's in the Little League World Series, or at the tail end of his career (is he 32 or 36?), no one really cares how old a Cuban baseball player is, as long as he's got a decent 12-6 curveball.

Aug 18 2009, 10:05AM

Afghanistan: Bets Are Off

Intrade, the online prediction market that's notorious for offering odds on many things political and getting pretty close to the outcomes, is offering action on who will win Afghanistan's second presidential election later this week, and no one's betting on it.

Aug 18 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: Government Takeover

What's so bad about a government takeover of health care? Are/should opponents of the Democratic reform effort be more worried about taxes and spending, a threat to capitalism in the health care industry, or government intrusion into people's lives? And if the system is broken, what's wrong with taking it over?

Aug 17 2009, 7:36PM

Twittering All Night Long

The Atlantic twitters. Boy, do we Twitter! @marcambinder is me, Mattizcoop is Matthew Cooper, @goldberg3000 is Jeff Goldberg, @1bobcohn is Bob Cohn, @jamesgibney is James Gibney, @jbennet is James Bennet,@SageStossel is Sage Stossel, SStossel is Scott Stossel, Ckummer is Corby Kummer, Gcaw is Graeme Wood, Clemtan is Clement Tan, and RecessionRoadie is Cristina Davidson

Aug 17 2009, 5:03PM

Obama's Man In Iraq: Wrong For The Job?

The Obama administration's ambassador to Iraq may be a star diplomat, but he's not a Middle East expert, Robert D. Kaplan points out in an Atlantic dispatch. Christopher R. Hill, appointed in February, had moved adroitly from the Balkans to negotiations with North Korea before assuming the new post, but Arabs have their own cultural and linguistic mores that preclude diving right in with effectiveness, Kaplan says...and, in that regard, Hill may fall short of his predecessor, the Bush-appointed Ryan Crocker, who is an Arabist by trade. As U.S. troops move out of Iraq, tensions have run high and the situation is sensitive; the U.S. ambassador's ability to broker deals between factions could make the difference between a relatively peaceful Iraq and one engulfed again by civil war. (And the Obama administration passed over a field of others that had more Middle East cred.) Hill will be tested, Kaplan writes; we can only hope he passes.

Aug 17 2009, 4:38PM

Republicans: A Co-op Plan Is Government-Run Health Care

That's what the Republican National Committee is now saying, with some help from Senate Majority Leader Harry Read. The RNC forwarded a press release/research memo to reporters today claiming that a "'public option' by any other name is still government health care." But does it smell as sweet? Probably not to supporters of a true public option, and it was perhaps out of a desire to alleviate those concerns (and pose a future co-op passage as a White House victory) that Reid deemed co-ops as "some type of public option" in early July--a quote the RNC references prominently.

Aug 17 2009, 2:30PM

Public Plan Watch: Liberals Warn White House

The chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Barbara Lee, issued this statement today on reports that the White House is backing away from insisting that a government-run option be included in the health care exchange. "Any bill without a public health insurance plan like Medicare is not health reform."

The basic calculus here: the White House thinks that House Democrats won't be able to say "no" to a reform bill in the end, even without a public plan, and is going to try other inducements -- money for favorite programs, promises down the road, maybe even some threats and pressure -- to keep them aboard.

Aug 17 2009, 1:20PM

How Iran Sees The Afghan Election

Between the Taliban and the U.S.-led occupation in Afghanistan, there are no good guys, from the point of view of the Iranian government, as Afghans will go to the polls this Thursday for the second presidential election of post-Taliban rule. Iran has been a historical ally of the Northern Alliance and an opponent of the Taliban; but it's also antagonistic to U.S. interests. You can see those dueling concerns in an article published today in the Tehran Times, which poses the election as an object of the occupiers' interests, not of Afghans':

Aug 17 2009, 12:49PM

Obama Defends DOMA, Offers Comforting Words To Gays

President Obama hasn't changed his policy, but he is softening his tone. Today, the Department of Justice filed a response to a legal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act for the second time since Obama took office.

Aug 17 2009, 9:43AM

Question Of The Weekend, Answered

Consensus among commenters seems to be that, if one industry group has to take a bigger hit in health care reform, it should be insurers or drug makers. Some responses to our question of the weekend:

From PorkBelly:

Insurers and Big Pharma should take the biggest hit. The profits are out of control and the pharmaceutical industry has been advertising pills like they were candy for years.

Aug 16 2009, 12:28PM

The Sunday Shows In Seven Sentences Or Less

1. Health care reform lives, but two deaths were semi-officially announced by the administration: Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius (on CNN's State of the Union with John King) and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged that a "public option" in the health insurance exchange is not essential -- competition is.

2. And Sebelius, while bemoaning the tenor of public debate, said that end-of-life counseling is proving too much of a distraction and won't be part of health care reform. She said on TW/WGSWOVSOJTIS (George Stephanopoulos who is on vacation so Jake Tapper is substituting) that she hopes some of the funding will be restored in the conference process.

3. Sen. Kent Conrad called the months-long argument over a public plan a "wasted effort." The North Dakota Democrat, on Fox News Sunday, said that there are enough votes in the Senate for adding a "co-op" option to the exchange. He was cagey about whether he thought the Senate would be ready with a bill by September 15. Sen. Richard Shelby reacted favorably to the notion that the administration is moving towards a public plan.

4. On CNN's State of the Union with John King, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson did not quite rule out voting in favor of a bill without a public option, but she came pretty close. "We'll have the same number of uninsured," she said. James Carville's advice to Democrats: "Let them kill it. Let them kill it with the interest group money, then run against them. That's what we ought to do."

5. On This Week, Sen. Orrin Hatch refused to say which Alaskan, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, or ex-Gov. Sarah Palin, had it right about the "death panels." He cited a statistic from the Lewin Group -- that the Democratic plan would move 119 million people into government run programs -- that applied to an entirely different bill than the one which the House will ultimately vote on. Hatch later said that the White House's IMAC Medicare price commission would lead to rationing seniors health care.

6. Here, on Face The Nation, is Robert Gibbs, on whether the President is hedging on his support for a public plan:

"What I am saying is the bottom line for this for the president is, what we have to have is choice and competition in the insurance market. Again, if you are in a place in this country where you only get one choice, how in the world are you going to be able to convince anybody that you are driving down costs when you don't have to compete against anything."

8. Rachel Maddow, debuting on Meet the Press, argued with ex-Majority Leader/ex-health care lobbyist/current FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey and seems to have gotten the better of him. Watch it here.

This quote from Maddow is not going to win her lots of allies at the White House:

But ultimately, if the president decides that he's going to go with a reform effort that doesn't include a public option, what he will have done is spent a ton of political capital, riled up an incredibly angry right wing base who's been told that this is a plot to kill grandma, grandma, and he will have achieved something that doesn't change health care very much and that doesn't save us very much money and won't do very much for the American people. It's not a very good thing to spend a lot of political capital on.

Aug 15 2009, 1:09PM

Question Of The Weekend: Health Care Industry

Health care reform would affect each industry group--insurers, hospitals, doctors, and drug makers--differently. If one has to take a bigger hit, who should it be?

Aug 14 2009, 4:35PM

Question Of The Day, Answered

Today we asked whether the health care debate has given you, the reader, more or less faith in American democracy. Consensus in the comments section seems to be less. Some responses:

Aug 14 2009, 1:53PM

Big Banks Should Pay For New Regulation

by Daniel Indiviglio

Bloomberg is reporting that the Obama administration is considering paying for their proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) by imposing new fees on big banks. I'm highly skeptical of a CFPA, but if you are going to have one, this actually sounds like a pretty good idea for how to fund it. Generally, when I find myself agreeing with a government idea, it means I haven't thought about the implications for long enough, so I reserve the right to change my mind on this one. But at this point, this plan seems like a good way to preserve competition.

First, for those unfamiliar with the CFPA, it would exist to protect consumers from financial products or practices that the government deems dangerous. Negative amortization mortgages come to mind. My cynicism stems from the fact that the government cannot necessarily predict what financial products or practices are bad for all consumers. But let's put those doubts aside and think about how such an agency should be paid for.

Aug 14 2009, 1:09PM

GOP: Dems Want To Spend Money To Cut Medicare

That's what Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) will say of President Obama's health care reform initiative in tomorrow's Republican radio address: that's its basically the worst of two worlds, in which Democrats spend a trillion dollars to expand government involvement in health care, while at the same time cutting Medicare:

Aug 14 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: Faith In Democracy?

Has the health care debate given you more, or less, faith in American democracy?

Aug 14 2009, 6:00AM

The Rundown, 8/14

It's inflation day! The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its monthly Consumer Price Index, and we'll find out how much goods we can purchase with our hard-earned dollars.

The First Family, meanwhile, will travel to Bozeman, Montana and visit Yellowstone National Park (fact, stolen from Montana News Station: the last sitting president to visit Yellowstone was Bill Clinton in 1996). Oh, and there will be a town hall on health care reform...President Obama will talk to Montanans about his health care plan, which is an important thing to do, since Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) has been heading up negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee...negotiations that have seemingly taken forever and might lead to an end of the public option, since it's looking like a co-op plan may come out of those talks. With that in mind, Obama will try to win over the Westerners.

Hillary Clinton will return from her trip to Africa, having settled any disputes over whether she's the secretary of State.

And the funeral of Eunice Kennedy Shriver will be held in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Vice President Joe Biden will attend.

Aug 13 2009, 5:40PM

Hurtling Toward 2010, 8/13

The 2010 midterms are just around the corner (sort of). Here's what's happening:

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) will kick off her campaign for governor next Tuesday in Dallas; her opponent, Gov. Rick Perry (R), received the Defender of Jerusalem Award in Israel; a Rasmussen poll shows Pat Toomey leading Sen. Arlen Specter (D) 48-36 in Pennsylvania; while Specter's primary opponent, Joe Sestak, had a pleasant town-hall meeting on health care; Barbara Boxer ran into some health care protesters at an event to promote her newest book; and Harry Reid talked about his upcoming reelection contest with Politics Daily's Jill Lawrence.

Aug 13 2009, 5:30PM

The Invisible Primary, 8/13

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

Sarah Palin responded to criticism of her "death panels" comment on Facebook, refusing to back down from it; Newt Gingrich said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute in DC that the U.S. government needs to think finance and fiscal policy, saying of the current crisis, "for 25 years we've been lying to ourselves"; Mike Huckabee will speak at a hotel in East Jerusalem next week; and Charlie Crist avoided censure (with a tie vote of 65-65) from Palm Beach County's Republican Party for his support for the stimulus.

Aug 13 2009, 2:50PM

Cheney Reveals Displeasure With Bush; Bloggers Reveal Displeasure With Cheney

Atlantic Wire, the newfangled Atlantic project to track opinion across the Web as new events unfold, has rounded up reactions to the news that former Vice President Dick Cheney is making some of his displeasures with President George W. Bush known. And opinionators are skeptical: pundits say Cheney is personally bitter over Scooter Libby, that he was shocked Bush had opinions of his own, and that Cheney's post-2008 conduct has made Bush look good. So even in his post-power reflexivity, Cheney gets about as much love as when he's out there bashing the new administration's national security policies.

Aug 13 2009, 2:34PM

Finance Committee Caving To Palin's Complaints?

"End of life counseling" has been framed. No longer is it a neutral phrase that refers to a government-fostered enhancement of the doctor-patient dialog. It is now apparently so polarizing and so toxic now that the Senate Finance Committee is willing to strike a provision from its bill that would add a counseling benefit to Medicare. The Wall Street Journal reports that the measure will be excluded from the committee's mark because it has become controversial. As the Journal notes, "dumping the provision would thwart a broad effort in recent years by doctors and hospitals to encourage patients to plan for end-of-life care." That's as close as a newspaper can come to saying: what a dumb thing they're doing! The issue _is_ touchy -- but in the context of the health care debate, it has become, in just a few days, synonymous with an attack against the entire concept of health reform: that Democrats want to ration care. A question, though, for those Democrats and liberals who'll be angry about this: the response to Palin's remarks about "death panels" as well as to Sen. Chuck Grassley's repetition of the idea was swift and fairly unequivocal: it's not as if the pro-reform side didn't quickly rebut the issue with better facts. My sense is that fear-based emotional appeals set in more quickly than reason-based emotional appeals -- always have.

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Aug 13 2009, 2:29PM

Gov 2.0 Watch: Archives Gets A Blog

The National Archives has been ahead of the curve when it comes to citizen participation on issues related to its brief; it just concluded a well-advertised public comment period on how it ought to handle declassification. Today, the archive launches a blog, NARAations, and poses a question: should the archives allow the public to tag items in its online catalog?

Aug 13 2009, 1:10PM

Details Of The $80 Billlion Prescripton Drug Deal?

The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim reports that he's obtained a memo outlining a deal between the White House and PhRMA (the drug industry's lobbying/trade group), passed on by an unnamed lobbyist. Both PhRMA and the White House deny that it reflects what the two sides have agreed on, but here it is, as published by The Huffington Post:

Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion.
1. Agree to increase of Medicaid rebate from 15.1 - 23.1% ($34 billion)
2. Agree to get FOBs done (but no agreement on details -- express disagreement on data exclusivity which both sides say does not affect the score of the legislation.) ($9 billion)
3. Sell drugs to patients in the donut hole at 50% discount ($25 billion)
This totals $68 billion
4. Companies will be assessed a tax or fee that will score at $12 billion. There was no agreement as to how or on what this tax/fee will be based.
Total: $80 billion

In exchange for these items, the White House agreed to:
1. Oppose importation
2. Oppose rebates in Medicare Part D
3. Oppose repeal of non-interference
4. Oppose opening Medicare Part B

Aug 13 2009, 10:43AM

In A Car With Harry Reid

Politics Daily columnist Jill Lawrence spends "Nineteen Minutes In A Car With Harry Reid" for an article posted this morning. Reid is leading a political "double life," Lawrence writes: he's one of the most powerful people in Washington, but at home his poll numbers are sagging. The chairwoman of the state GOP led him by six percentage points in a recent poll on Reid's 2010 reelection contest, and he may have dodged a bullet when Rep. Dean Heller (R), who could have posed an even more serious threat, decided not to run. He's at the forefront of a national Democratic movement that could be shade too liberal for Nevadan palates (though Nevada voted for President Obama 55 percent to 43 in November). In addition to telling Lawrence that the Senate will pass both energy legislation and a health care overhaul, here's what Reid had to say about that double life:

Aug 13 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: The Other Big Reform

With all the talk of health care, we seem to have lost track of the other major policy priority the Obama administration is still trying to move forward: energy. What will become of the House-passed cap-and-trade carbon emissions bill in the Senate? Will it change, and if so how?

Aug 13 2009, 6:00AM

The Rundown, 8/13

Joe Biden returns! The vice president is back today from his vacation in South Carolina to rescue us from the August doldrums with (we hope) an infusion of off-the-cuff charm and good-natured affinity for news microphones...we hope he says something amusing or newsworthy--either one will do.

We'll also get an update on economic indicators as the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its total of unemployment insurance claims for the week and its import and export price indices for July. If the unemployment claims drop, it's good news for the White House, which is riding high on the recent drop in unemployment rate...see, we told you the economy is getting better, they will say. Viva la stimulus.

Aug 12 2009, 8:16PM

At What Cost, Cutting Off A Leg?

An amusing press release from the governing body for American surgeons:

Comments (26)

Aug 12 2009, 6:00PM

Potter Stewart's Afghanistan Triumph

Judging by the reviews, America's bluntest diplomat, Richard Holbrooke, did not impress an audience of policy wonks this morning. And that should worry the administration: Holbrooke, of course, is the president's point person on Afghanistan and Pakistan -- AfPak -- his coinage. Asked at a panel in Washington how the administration is defining success in the region, Holbrooke answered. "In the simplest sense, the Supreme Court test for another issue: We'll know it when we see it."

For those, right and left, who worry that the administration lacks a strategy and has anything other than a fuzzy sense of what progress constitutes, Holbrooke's comment is the very model of a Kinsley gaffe -- when a Washington hand accidentally tells the truth. Actually, Holbrooke probably intended to say what he said.

Anyway, mouths dropped open, apparently. As Spencer Ackerman writes, "Holbrooke's answer suggested an unresolved tension at the level of strategy."

Whether or not the administration has a strategy in Afghanistan that goes beyond tactics, like the interagency, civilian surge that Holbrooke is coordinating, and the counterinsurgency doctrine that now guides the military, is of secondary importance. If the administration can't figure out how to describe it, it doesn't exist. When the U.S. first sent paramilitary CIA officers into Northern Afghanistan in late 2002, the American people and Congress didn't demand a strategy: Osama Bin Laden's attacks were fresh on the mind and "defeating the Taliban" was easy to picture in the mind's eye. There's been clear mission creep. The goal now is to defeat Al Qaeda and stabilize the region. Americans -- and Democrats in Congress -- are very wary of region stabilizing. It suggests, in essence, imperial command over a chaotic area -- the assumption of responsibility for an interest that isn't clear, and the sacrifice of American lives because other countries can't get their priorities straight. The nuclear threat from Pakistan and radicals is clarifying, but it is tertiary and not well communicated by this administration.

Aug 12 2009, 5:47PM

The Invisible Primary, 8/12

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

It appears Rick Santorum is testing the waters for a 2012 run--he's scheduled a trip to Iowa in October; according to a new CNN/Opinion Research poll, Sarah Palin's favorability ratings have dropped significantly, from 48 percent to 39 percent; Eric Cantor criticized U.S. foreign policy during his trip to Israel; the DCCC used Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich to raise money; and Mitt Romney leads his putative opponents by a lot in a new poll of New Hampshire voters, collecting 50 percent of support (Palin and Mike Huckabee get 17 percent).

Aug 12 2009, 5:35PM

Hurtiling Toward 2010, 8/12

The 2010 midterms are just around the corner (sort of). Here's what's happening:

Sen. Chris Dodd underwent successful surgery for prostate cancer and is recovering at a New York hospital; Gary Herbert was sworn in as Utah's new governor today (after Jon Huntsman was nominated as ambassador to China), and he'll face a special election in 2010; former New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte made her first public speech as a potential Senate candidate; and Pennsylvania Democrats have yet to line up up behind Arlen Specter, with Joe Sestak mounting a primary challenge.

Aug 12 2009, 2:33PM

Recess Watch: A "Death To Obama" Sign At Cardin's Town-Hall

It's August, and lawmakers are back in their home states talking to constituents. Liberals and conservatives alike will show up to town-hall meetings and other events to question their elected officials--sometimes loudly--about health care and the rest of Washington's business, as lawmakers make the case for their own agenda. When passions run high, debate can be spirited. We'll be watching.

Liberals, and especially unions, have received a slew of death threats this August over health care reform. Rep. Brad Miller's (D-NC) office said they'd received one last week. The conservative group FreedomWorks released a recording of one yesterday. Today, at a town-hall meeting hosted by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), a man held up a small, handwritten sign reading "Death to Obama," The Hill's J. Taylor Rushing reports.

Comments (47)

Aug 12 2009, 12:20PM

The Rise Of The Alinsky Explanantion

Next Monday, in Kansas City, Missouri, a group of conservative organizers will conduct a most unusual training session. They will teach the "Rules for Radicals" laid down by the god of community organizing, Saul Alinsky. The idea: learn to recognize the footprints of the enemy.

Barack Obama is many things to conservative activists: a socialist, a Nazi, an avatar of a scary new world, a wrong-headed liberal. Some seem to hunger for a more precise definition of their enemy, one that does satisfies a longing to explain how this Obama guy managed to fool so many people.

It's all about Saul Alinsky. Obama's attachment to the legendary Chicago organizer is essential.

Here is the syllogism: Obama fashions himself as a community organizer. Saul Alinsky invented the modern concept of community organizing and was a radical revolutionary. Therefore, Obama is a follower of Alinsky's, and is using Alinsky's methods towards the radical, apocalyptic ends that Alinsky favored. This caricature of Obama as a moderate -- it's all a set-up to cover for his radicalism. Right out of the Alinsky playbook. Right?

Obama discovered Alinsky's teachings in college, and surrounded himself with Alinsky disciples when he worked in projects on the South Side of Chicago. Obama clearly admired Alinsky's methodology and lingo, which stressed self-interest over abstractions and organizing over politics. Alinsky was aware that radicals, branded as such, wouldn't be effective, and so he urged community organizers to pay careful attention to language -- to use common, simple words to draw out commonalities. Alinsky rejected politics, as did Obama -- at least initially. It is inconvenient for his supporters to acknowledge that Alinsky is part of Obama's identity, but Obama has conceded this. Writing in The New Republic, Ryan Lizza noted that Obama did not object to the Alinsky comparisons. Michelle Obama once said of her husband, "Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change."

Lizza was one of the first national reporters to note a tension: Obama's methods are an homage to leftist radicalism, but his style is sedate, and his ends seems fairly traditional. Obama observers have explained policy decisions by describing how this tension plays itself out in Obama's mind -- a war between the motive force of radicalism and Obama's temperamental conservatism.

In 1971, Alinsky wrote his magnum opus, "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realist Radicals." Its enduring message: the ends justify the means. The modern grassroots left -- and I'm referring to groups like US Action and ACORN -- owe their success, partly, to Alinsky's legacy and teachings.

If the story ended here, and Obama quantum-leaped from teaching Alinsky to organizers in Chicago to the presidency, one could make a compelling argument that Obama's singular influence was Alinsky.

But the story continued. And Obama, while acknowledging that his political identity was inextricably bound up with Alinsky's teachings, matured. He came to believe that Alinsky was naive about politics. He rejected Alinsky's approach to organized religion (which is one reason why Obama, ahem, found himself attracted to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's radical Christology.) It is clear that Obama has become less liberal over time. He embraced the traditional family structure. It is impossible to say whether his early political battles -- challenging his opponent's petition signatures to get him off the ballot -- were more influenced by the writings of a radical or by Obama's own ambition -- and the milieu within which he ran -- Chicago, urban machines, Daley, racial tension and accommodation.

There is no evidence that Obama, after the age of 25 or so, ever endorsed Alinsky's Marxism, or his atheism, or his penchant for subterfuge. Indeed, Obama's career is evidence that as Obama expanded his social and political circles, his reliance of Alinsky's methods declined, and his affinity for Alinsky's revolutionary goals diminished. Alinsky's "rules for radicals" seem to our modern ears to be axioms for effective political organizing. Both left and right have benefited from -- or were influenced by -- the tactics that Alinsky taught the left. (The New Right consciously borrowed tactics from the left.)

Is it fair to say that our president learned valuable lessons in community organizing from a radical Marxist named Saul Alinsky? Absolutely. But that's really all it's fair to say. And maybe it's enough to say that. The thought that an American president would be partial to a guy like Alinsky is probably disqualifying to many.

But the next step -- that what Obama wants is what Alinsky wanted, or that Obama is somehow employing Alinsky's ironclad rules -- assumes that Obama is a stick figure; either that or a cunning, patient conspirator who consciously laid the groundwork for a presidency that is now marked by radicalism in methods and consequences. This is magical thinking, untethered to reality. It is also hard for Obama allies to disprove because it asks people to judge motivation, which is impossible. Was Obama more influenced by his faith in Christ or by Saul Alinsky? By his experience as a biracial, binational child without a father? His exposure to Chicago politics? His friends -- conservatives and liberals alike? By his stint as a lawyer? As a state legislator? As a black man in America? My answer is: by all of these sources.

To be sure, Obama ain't pure. And like other ambitious politicians, he is capable of modulating his language to fit the zeitgeist of the times. Lizza, in a subsequent profile of Obama, noted that Obama "campaigns on reforming a broken political process, yet he has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist. He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the inside game. He is ideologically a man of the left, but at times he has been genuinely deferential to core philosophical insights of the right."

Never letting a crisis go to waste; promoting universal health coverage; regulatory reform (in the wake of, remember, the collapse of capitalism) -- these aren't the goals of radicals -- they're the goals of liberals. Obama is a liberal. The Alinskyian explanation isn't satisfying.

Aug 12 2009, 8:12AM

Twitter: Solidarity On The Cheap

by D.B. Grady

When brave Iranian students took to the streets in protest of a crooked election, Twitter was there. Users colored their avatars in solidarity, and the site flowed as green as the Chicago River on St. Patrick's Day. People who might otherwise have vaguely identified Tehran as a country we bombed post-9/11 were speaking authoritatively on Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the sympathies of the Grand Ayatollahs. Bored office clerks across America dependably--they might say heroically--reported movements of the Basij, echoed warnings of street barricades, and quoted the Quran (in Arabic script, natch) with the revolutionary tenacity of Samuel Adams, before he was just a beer.

It would be a challenge to find a single journal of record that didn't call the uprising the Twitter Revolution. With that in mind, a note to would-be revolutionaries: next time, try Facebook.

Today, hundreds of protesters are behind bars. It should come as no surprise that harsh treatment and regular beatings are part of the Iranian prison experience. And it's now reported that the jailed women and young boys are subject to rape and sodomy.

As for the fearless denizens of Twitter? They've moved on to other important news of the day: Lady Gaga. Regis and Kelly. "New Moon."

Iranians in want of democracy must feel a bit like the Kurds following the Gulf War.

Twitter has proven itself not to be a tool of revolution, or a mechanism of change, but a mirror of the excitability and fickleness of the American zeitgeist. Mousavi was all but forgotten when Michael Jackson fatally overdosed. And on Twitter, Jackson wasn't just an 80's

pop star and plastic surgeon's paycheck. He became a humanitarian. A great humanitarian. The greatest humanitarian of his day. Again, the Chicago River flowed, only this time it was with the maudlin tears of children who would be denied another Michael Jackson album. And people whose only exposure to "Thriller" was the dance scene in "13 Going on 30" became aficionados, discussing which b-sides were tragically overlooked.

It would be generous to call Twitter a mile wide and an inch deep. Casual usage would measure its depth in atoms, at best. Supporting change in the world is fun, but only as it allows for narcissistic melodrama. It's hard feel good about yourself when child rape is part

of the story. It's tragic, but not exciting. Celebrity deaths and reality television allow for both.

D.B. Grady is a freelance writer and novelist. His debut novel, Red Planet Noir, is due in bookstores this November. He currently lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and can be found on the web at http://www.dbgrady.com.

Aug 12 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: Selling Health Care

President Obama is hitting the road to sell health care in town-hall forums this month. Is that a good strategy? Does it dilute the impact of an Obama public appearance, or is he on the right track getting out there and talking to Americans about reform?

Aug 12 2009, 6:00AM

The Rundown, 8/12

Sonia Sotomayor gets to bask in the glow of her new job on the Supreme Court today as President Obama hosts a reception for the newly confirmed Justice this morning at the White House--part of the prize for collecting nine Republican votes and not having the "complete meltdown" Sen. Lindsey Graham so wisely warned against.

Alaskans get some special attention tomorrow--a veritable invasion of Democrats now that Sarah Palin has resigned--as five of Obama's 17 Cabinet members will be there. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will take part in a White House Rural Tour forum along with Alaska's new governor, Sean Parnell (R), and Sen. Mark Begich (D).

Aug 11 2009, 9:25PM

Twittering All Night Long...

The Atlantic twitters. Boy, do we Twitter! @marcambinder is me, Mattizcoop is Matthew Cooper, @goldberg3000 is Jeff Goldberg, @1bobcohn is Bob Cohn, @jamesgibney is James Gibney, @jbennet is James Bennet,@SageStossel is Sage Stossel, SStossel is Scott Stossel, Ckummer is Corby Kummer, Gcaw is Graeme Wood, Clemtan is Clement Tan, and RecessionRoadie is Cristina Davidson

Aug 11 2009, 6:45PM

Hurtling Toward 2010, 8/11

The 2010 midterms are just around the corner (sort of). Here's what's happening:

Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) won't challenge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid; with Rep. Carolyn Maloney out of New York's Democratic Senate primary, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) picked up another endorsement from a congressman; and Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson entered the primary to replace Sen. Roland Burris (D) in Illinois, giving State Treasurer and primary favorite Alexi Giannoulias a challenger.

Aug 11 2009, 6:00PM

The Invisible Primary, 8/11

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took a shot at Sarah Palin's claim that President Obama's health reform effort could lead to a "death panel"; the former political director for the Iowa GOP ranked Mike Huckabee as the top contender in the 2012 Iowa Republican caucus; Huckabee claimed that disruptions at town-hall meetings have been caused by "organized supporters of the Democrats," while Haley Barbour said events have gotten rowdy because "people do not understand why this is being crammed down their throat without getting their questions answered."

Aug 11 2009, 5:14PM

Isakson Doesn't Want To Help Obama

The unwitting Republican validator of the day is Sen. Johnny Isakson, the conservative Georgia Republican whom Democrats -- and President Obama -- are using to squash rumors that the emerging health care consensus will empower "death panels" to decide who lives and who dies.

"I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin's website had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts," he told the Washington Post. Isakson agreed that the policy in question involved voluntary counseling about end-of-life options. All this, he said, expands people's ability to choose.

Aug 11 2009, 6:20AM

The Rundown, 8/11

It's August, and the political world has mostly gone silent...but President Obama will rescue us from all that today as his feverish efforts to sell health care resume with a town-hall forum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Don't count on angry, shouting mobs at this one...not because every county in New Hampshire voted for Obama in November, but because imposing Secret Service agents will be on hand to "shout down" any rowdiness.

Biden vacation countdown: 1 day remaining until we get Vice President Joe Biden back from his vacation on Kiawah Island, to make news, say things, and do what he does.

Aug 10 2009, 5:15PM

Hurtling Toward 2010, 8/10

The 2010 midterms are just around the corner (sort of). Here's what's happening:

Taegan Goddard says 2010 could be a year for DC outsiders; Chris Cillizza parses the 2010 ramifications of Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation; Democratic candidate Dan Seals has an early primary lead in the race for Rep. Mark Kirk's (R-IL) seat; a former Ron Paul presidential campaign adviser Peter Schiff is mulling a libertarian Senate bid in Connecticut--which already looks to be a tight race between Sen. Chris Dodd (D) and former Rep. Rob Simmons (R))--and Paul supporters have helped him raise $528,000 since he formed his exploratory committee in mid-July.

Aug 10 2009, 4:17PM

The Invisible Primary, 8/10

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

On Facebook, Sarah Palin called for civil discourse in the health care debate; and she gave a shout-out to Rep. Michelle Bachmann; NRSC Chairman John Cornyn asked supporters on the NRSC's e-mail list who they want to see on the ballot in 2012; and Tim Pawlenty criticized "cash for clunkers."

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Aug 10 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: The Will To Continue

Will the public and Congress support an anticipated plea from the administration for more time and resources in Afghanistan?

Aug 9 2009, 12:11PM

The Sunday Shows In Seven Sentences Or Less

Miss the Sunday shows? Save some time!

1. On Meet the Press and Face The Nation, Nat'l Sec. Adviser Gen. Jim Jones refused label the situation in Afghanistan as a "crisis." But he said that the U.S. did not have "an articulated strategy" in the region until March, so it's a little to expect to see too much progress. Patience, he counsels. We'll know "within a year" whether the current strategy is working. Jones would not rule out sending more U.S. troops in the near term.

There's going to be a little bit more fighting. Unfortunately, we're taking more casualties, but if we're able to marry up the other two legs of this three-legged stool that I mentioned, put things that will change the economic forecast for the Afghan people on the ground, put Afghan troops, Afghan police in the villages languages and towns, I think that's the -- that's the future

2. Senate Armed Services Cmte. Chairman Carl Levin and Sen. Lindsey Graham seem to be on the same page, re: Afghanistan. Graham had this colorful soundbite: "My message to my Democratic colleagues is that we made mistakes in Iraq. Let's not Rumsfeld Afghanistan. Let's don't do this thing on the cheap. Let's have enough combat power and engagement across the board to make sure we're successful. And quite frankly, we all have got a lot of ground to make up."

3. On This Week, Newt Gingrich found a way to defend Sarah Palin's fear that a "death panel" would decide the fate of a baby like Trig. "Communal standards historically is a very dangerous concept," Gingrich told George Stephanopoulos Howard Dean seemed to say that a bill without a public plan wasn't worth signing. He tried to distance himself from the organization he founded, Democracy for America, which is running ads against Ben Nelson (though he did say he called Nelson yesterday.) Both Gingrich and Dean lamented the lack of cost containment in the health care bills, although for different reasons. Gingrich referenced his think tank several times

4. On "State of the Union" with John King, Sen. Dick Durbin said he was open to voting for a bill that did not include the public plan, and Amb. Susan Rice said U.S. policymakers would review policy toward Iran in September.

5. CFR President Richard Haass called Bill Clinton's North Korea trip "irrelevant." More: "Until the Chinese use their leverage in North Korea, we are going to be living with the North Korean threat."

6. On Fox News Sunday, Gen. Jones said that K.J. Ill was 100% in control of North Korea.

7. Extra: Sunday background reading: Walter Pincus on the costs of Afghanistan, Maureen Dowd on driving Sarah Palin crazy, Matthew Mosk on Barack Obama's small victories, and Elizabeth Rubin on how Americans caused Hamid Karzai's problems.

Aug 8 2009, 12:58PM

Twittering All Weekend

The Atlantic twitters. Boy, do we Twitter! @marcambinder is me, Mattizcoop is Matthew Cooper, @goldberg3000 is Jeff Goldberg, @1bobcohn is Bob Cohn, @jamesgibney is James Gibney, @jbennet is James Bennet,@SageStossel is Sage Stossel, SStossel is Scott Stossel, Ckummer is Corby Kummer, Gcaw is Graeme Wood, Clemtan is Clement Tan, and RecessionRoadie is Cristina Davidson

Aug 8 2009, 12:00PM

Question Of The Weekend: Guess The Codenames

Our Question of the Weekend: Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod have Secret Service protection details now. Guess their codenames (and please be civil).

Comments (35)

Aug 7 2009, 4:40PM

Why The Brawls of August Are Good

There's lots of lamenting on the left about all the teabaggers showing up and town hall meetings on health care being held by returning members. The right's all atwitter about organized labor and the left sending people to these meetings. I'm not sure any of it is really bad. Obviously, death threats, demonization and the like are not good for civil discourse. No one gains from shouting. In a perfect world each town meeting would be a civilized discussion of the merits of different approaches to health care. But that's not the world we live in. The more likely alternative is no interest, sparsely attended meetings or just one side showing up.

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Aug 7 2009, 3:33PM

Recess Watch: Dingell Berated

It's August, and lawmakers are back in their home states talking to constituents. Liberals and conservatives alike will show up to town-hall meetings and other events to question their elected officials--sometimes loudly--about health care and the rest of Washington's business, as lawmakers make the case for their own agenda. When passions run high, debate can be spirited. We'll be watching.

83-year-old John Dingell (D-MI), the longest-serving member in the history of the House of Representatives and chairman emeritus of the House Energy and Commerce Committee (which produced part of the House health care bill), was berated by health reform opponents at a town-hall event in Romulus, Michigan yesterday.

Aug 7 2009, 2:35PM

Mehsud's Death: One Small Step For Obama, One Giant Leap For CIA?

The most wanted terrorist in Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud, is most likely in repose, the result of a successful jointed intelligence operation mounted by the U.S. Air Force equipment, the CIA operations officers and Pakistan's ISI. Mehsud, according to a United Nations report not disputed by the intelligence community, has been responsible for about 80% of the terrorism-related carnage in Pakistan, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. A former ISI asset, Meshud is responsible for the deaths of American soldiers, too. In March, he promised a "spectacular" attack against Washington, D.C.

It's easy to speculate how his death will effect Pakistani public opinion toward the U.S, but I'm not an expert, and so I'll leave the speculation to others. Mehsud was an enemy of the government, but he is one of many, and his organization remains intact.

Domestically, the death may help solve a legitimacy problem the administration is confronting.

President Obama and his generals have been inundated with bad news from Afghanistan and even worse news about the public's willingness to tolerate the U.S. presence there. As the administration completes its latest theater-wide review, it's widely expected that the options given to the president will be pared down to two: if you want to win, we need a lot more troops and money. If we think the region is stable enough, we should begin to leave.

The Obama administration would prefer to "win" -- that is, significantly weaken the Taliban infrastructure in Pakistan and Afghanistan and isolate Al Qaeda, but it is by no means clear that Congress agrees that this goal ought to be a foreign policy priority. There is almost zero political will among Democrats in the House, in particular, to significantly increase funding for what's now called "overseas contingency operations." Yesterday, administration counterterroism chief John Brennan made it clear that the fight against Al Qaeda cannot be won without priority being given to "upstream" factors like development, civil society and engagement. The irony -- and what makes the administration anxious -- is that if Congress refuses to spend more money, the military and intelligence arms of the war will be prioritized over the building of civil society and the engagement with Afghans and Pakistanis.

The morale of the CIA's National Clandestine Service doesn't seem to be that high, although, honestly, I don't know whether this is true -- it's what I hear, but that shop is closed. This successful mission may boost spirits. We don't know how the Predator drones tracked Mehsud, but HUMINT -- either involving a unilateral U.S. asset, an asset controlled by a foreign intelligence agency, or an asset run by the Pakistani intelligence service, almost certainly played a significant part. Getting info is hard enough, but turning a tip into action requires a functioning CIA bureaucracy. The bureaucracy worked efficiently enough in this case. (One can only speculate how the National Security Agency and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency might have helped, too.) Cooperation between the CIA and Pakistani's ISI -- which has long tried to play all sides of the conflict -- will probably change for the better. American intelligence officials are now able to believe that the ISI isn't actually protecting dangerous tribal leaders, even though I'm sure that some might think Mehsud was deliberately sacrificed in order to advance the ISI-American relationship, which is just as critical to the stability of Pakistan as the ISI-Taliban relationship.

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Aug 7 2009, 1:19PM

Sarah Palin Xbox: The Replica

Bummed that the auction for a Sarah Palin-autographed Xbox has been taken down from eBay after a bid was submitted for the $1.1 million asking price? Now you can own the replica: an eBay user is selling another Xbox, with a fake autograph, for $1,100. The replica "has been painstakingly recrafted using:
* Detailed photographs of the original signed Xbox 360
* Imagery of Palin's signature on the infamous "helicopter-wolf-hunting" bill from 2003," according to the seller.

UPDATE: The original auction is back on! According to eBay, it was taken down by mistake (and had nothing to do with the anonymous bid placed at $1.1 million). Hope returns for anyone interested in bidding. Effects on the market value of a replica have yet to be determined.

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Aug 7 2009, 10:47AM

Martinez Resigns; Crist Won't Appoint Himself

Don't expect Gov. Charlie Crist to appoint himself to the Senate now, given that Sen. Mel Martinez has officially announced his resignation. Under Florida law, Gov. Crist can appoint himself, but Crist has repeatedly said that he would not do so if Martinez vacated early. Crist now needs to find a seatfiller... someone who can tend to the business of the state without a reserve of ambition. Possible candidates, CBS News's Steve Chaggaris reports, include Gov. Bob Martinez, R-FL; former Crist chief of staff George Lemieux; former Florida AG and Secretary of State Jim Smith.

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Aug 7 2009, 6:00AM

The Rundown, 8/7

Once again, at the beginning of every month, it's...unemployment day. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will come out with its numbers on how many jobs were lost, what the unemployment rate is, and the nation will reflect on how Americans are struggling through tough times, while commenting on how the Obama administration is handling it all. MarketWatch predicts unemployment will rise to 9.7%...if it's double digits, the White House could have a heck of a news cycle on its hands.

Aug 6 2009, 7:10PM

Hurtling Toward 2010, 8/8

The 2010 midterms are just around the corner (sort of). Here's what's happening:

State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is leading the field in the Democratic Senate primary in Illinois, according to a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll; the NRCC's 70-member target list came out this week; and NRSC Chairman John Cornyn (R-TX) says the fear and anger shown by conservative demonstrators at town-hall meetings will make his job easier in 2010.

Aug 6 2009, 6:36PM

Here's What John Brennan Knew....

The Washington Independent notes that White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan refused to say whether he knew about the controversial post 9-11 domestic surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency. In one way, it doesn't really matter, at least to President Obama, who presumably knows the answer and was comfortable enough to install Brennan as his chief homeland security adviser. But the public has a right to know the background of the guy advising the president on such sensitive stuff, and there is an interesting disparity in the level of culpability that we tend to ascribe to former Bush administration officials. (Brennan will say that he was never a Bush guy... always a CIA guy...just like when he was a CIA briefer for Bill Clinton.) So, here's the answer, as best as I can tell: senior intelligence officials with direct knowledge of Brennan's role confirm that, indeed, as head of the National Counterterrorism Center (and of its earlier incarnation, called TTIC), he was privy to both the NSA's "take" -- the raw product -- and the mechanisms used to collect it. The NCTC cross-checked NSA information with everything else collected by the intelligence community and prepared threat assessments.

Aug 6 2009, 6:31PM

The Invisible Primary, 8/6

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

Mitt Romney has picked a publisher and title for his new book--"No Apology: A Case for American Greatness"--which will come out next March with St. Martin's Press; a man from Alberta, Canada is asking $1.1 million on eBay for an Xbox autographed by Sarah Palin; Newt Gingrich has taken to likening the Obama administration to the oppressive regime in 1984; and Mike Pence criticized society's "evolving attitude" toward marriage.

Aug 6 2009, 3:52PM

An Intelligence Briefing From The DNI

Thanks to the Federation of American Scientists, the Director of National Intelligence's recent unclassified, written answers to questions from Senators are available. I've taken the liberty of pulling out the juicy bits:

** The relationship between the Afghanistan insurgency and Al Qaeda is complex, with the terrorist group providing some support. Calculating the overall size of the insurgency -- or even defining the insurgency -- is difficult.

** The intelligence community (IC) has no evidence that Iran has made the decision to enrich uranium, and does not believe Iran will do so soon given international pressure. The IC makes a distinction between what Iran _can_ do -- and what it has done or will do. The IC remains convinced that Iran wants to develop the capacity to build a nuclear weapon even if it will never actually build one.

** Iran is covertly supplying arms to Afghan insurgents even while claiming it is allied with the people of Afghanistan and has signed agreements with its government.

Aug 6 2009, 1:05PM

Republicans for Sotomayor

We're still a couple of hours shy of the vote that will confirm Sonia Sotomayor as the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. At the moment it looks like eight Republicans will support her: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Mel Martinez of Florida, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and Kit Bond of Missouri. George Voinovich of Ohio is said to be up in the air, according to the National Review's online edition.

In some ways this is predictable, You figured that the Maine Senators, the most left leaning in the GOP Conference, would go with Sotomayor. Lindsey Graham was not a shocker although I was surprised that he actually did support her. I'm surprised that Orin Hatch, who supported a lot of Democratic judicial nominees over the years, didn't come over, but he's also dropped out of the health care talks which suggests that he's getting some pressure from the right.

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Aug 6 2009, 11:31AM

Brennan: "We Cannot Shoot Our Way Out" Of Terrorism Challenge

Analysis later; first, highlights of homeland security adviser John Brennan's description of President Obama's "new thinking" on counterterrorism.

The substance outline Obama's new approach.

1. This isn't a "global war on terrorists" or "jihadists." Labeling the challenge as such confers legitimacy on the univeralizing aspirations of Al Qaeda. "Terrorism is a tactic, a means to an end," Brennan said. He implied that the Bush administration had confused "ends and means."

2. Terrorism should not define U.S. foreign policy; instead, combating terrorists is one element in a broader strategy that engages Muslims and other rogue countires and promotes development and individual aspirations.

3. A "broader and more accurate understanding" of the causes that fuel extremism. It's not that poverty and education cause terrorism, but "there is no denying" that when young people feel disconntected and when governments "fail to provide" for thier people, "people become more suspectable to ideologies of .. death." Brennan calls these the "upstream factors." Brennan: "We cannot shoot our way out of this challenge."

4. Addressing these factors "is ultimately not a military operation" -- it's a security, education and economic operation.

5. Integrating all instruments of American power to "ensure that those upstream factors discourage rather than encourage, violent extremism."

Aug 6 2009, 10:34AM

Is The "Birther" Movement A Liberal Conspiracy?

Aug 6 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: Would You Hold A Town-Hall?

If you were a Democratic congressman in a swing district, would you hold a town-hall meeting this month, or, given what other Dems have faced, would you just skip it?

Aug 6 2009, 6:00AM

The Rundown, 8/6

Today will be a big day for gubernatorial candidate Creigh (pron. kree) Deeds in Virginia, as he'll get some campaign help at a rally with DNC Chairman/Gov. Tim Kaine and President Obama, the best campaigner in the land...unless you ask Public Policy Polling. We'll see if Obama's polling slide continues, as Quinnipiac will release a survey on Obama and the economy...and we'll get to relive the beer talk, as Quinnipiac also polled on Obama's Gates/Crowley/healing-of-racial-divisions meeting at the White House. The Senate Judiciary Committee will look at immigration reform...and not to be missed: Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) will deliver a keynote address at the Second Maryland Horse Forum.

Aug 5 2009, 7:54PM

Twittering All Night Long

The Atlantic twitters. Boy, do we Twitter. @marcambinder is me, @goldberg3000 is Jeff Goldberg, @1bobcohn is Bob Cohn, @jamesgibney is James Gibney, @jbennet is James Bennet,@SageStossel is Sage Stossel, Stossel is Scott Stossel, Ckummer is Corby Kummer, Gcaw is Graeme Wood, and RecessionRoadie is Cristina Davidson.

Aug 5 2009, 7:30PM

Hurtling Toward 2010, 8/5

The 2010 midterms are just around the corner (sort of). Here's what's happening:

Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) will get some help from former Drug Czar Bill Bennett and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert; the DCCC added 11 Republican targets to its health care offensive today; and Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), the former GOP whip who's running to replace retiring Sen. Kit Bond (R) this fall, says he doesn't want to talk about President Obama's birth certificate anymore after being identified as a potential birther by Firedoglake (Blunt has said he has no reason to believe Obama was not born in the U.S.).

Aug 5 2009, 5:45PM

The Enduring Clintons

When you think of what just happened in Pyonyang, it's extraordinary. A former president was dispatched to rescue the employees of his former vice president. Meanwhile, his wife, the secretary of state, who lost to the current president, played an integral role in setting up the entire mission even as she jets off to Africa where the president himself just visited. Try substituting Nixon/Agnew, Bush/Quayle, Roosevelt/Wallace, or any other combination of president and vice president and it's impossible to picture. Such is the unique position of the Clintons in the world today, the Secretary of State married to a free-floating global ambassador.

Aug 5 2009, 5:20PM

Question Of The Day, Answered

Some good responses to our question of the day about Bill Clinton, John Bolton, and Kim Jong Il, which was: After Bill Clinton secured the release of journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling from North Korea, former UN Ambassador John Bolton suggested this was "rewarding bad behavior" and that Clinton's trip, despite its apparent success, had legitimized Kim Jong Il's regime. Is he right? Did North Korea successfully use Lee and Ling as pawns for legitimacy?--and, if the two are now safe, does it really matter if that's the case?"

From chiclegal:

Who cares? The girls are free. We are not Kim Jong Ils parents.

Aug 5 2009, 4:57PM

The Invisible Primary, 8/5

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

According to a Public Policy Polling survey (automated, via telephone), Virginians say they'd react better to Sarah Palin campaigning for a candidate in their state than to President Obama doing the same; Palin traveled to New York City for book meetings and told Politico that divorce rumors are "made up"; Tim Pawlenty will headline a Florida GOP dinner later this month, which will place him alongside fellow 2012 potential Charlie Crist; and Newt Gingrich addressed the Young America's Foundation's Conservative Student Conference.

Aug 5 2009, 3:56PM

A Progress Bar For The Stimulus

If watching the federal government spend nearly $800 billion in stimulus money feels, to you, like watching an old computer try to download music, you will like what the folks at ProPublica have done--they've created a Stimulus Progress Bar, which tracks the spending, accompanied by a breakdown of the federal agencies the money went through. Right now, $70 billion has been spent, $122 billion is in process, and $389 billion is left (that only adds up to $703 billion--that's because $212 billion of the total package were tax cuts).

Aug 5 2009, 12:39PM

Health Care Polling Snapshots

Two new national health care surveys out today illustrate the challenges facing proponents and opponents of reform. Key fact: a bare majority of Americans support Barack Obama's health care plan, without having to have that plan defined for them, according to CNN. That's stable compared to a month ago. The public is split -- 40-40- on whether its better to have government or insurance companies make decisions regarding their health care, which is a clear enough indication of why the left is eager to demonize the insurers and why the right is eager to demonize government. Of course, the reality today is that both government and insurers already intervene. Here's a datum that shows why the White House is pushing hard on the consumer protection theme. Asked which of the following statements respondents agreed with...

Aug 5 2009, 12:32PM

The National Security Court System: An Interview With Glenn Sulmasy

Ideologues who are invested in the detention policy debate generally break down into one of two camps: either they believe that existing institutions are sufficient to handle the challenge, or that the president needs a new, codified authority to preventatively detain suspected terrorists wherever he wants. The truth is that the middle ground is vast, and the good news is that the people responsible for crafting our policy tend to be very serious about finding it. Into that debate comes a serious new book by Glenn Sulmasy, a professor of law at the Coast Guard Academy and a U.S. Coast Coard Captain and member of the Judge Advocate Generals corps. Sulmasy expands on what he calls a "hybrid" approach to the quandary of prosecuting terrorists. He would create a national security court, run by civilians, that exists outside the federal court system envisioned in Article III of the Constitution. The standards of evidence would be changed to reflect the realities of counterterrorism, but every detainee would be presumed triable. They'd have to be tried within a year of being captured. Three-judge panels would use a "reasonable doubt" standard for convictions, and two of them must agree before a detainee could be found guilty. Those detainees found not guilty would be detained until a suitable place for them to go can be found. Detainees would be housed on U.S. soil in prisons built on military bases. The death penalty would only be applicable if the detainee's home country has legalized the practice. The President would retain some thin authority to detain those found not guilty under extreme circumstances, but there would be strict safeguards on the exercise of this power, and its exercise would be public. In recent weeks, Sulmasy has added a new provision: he believes that the legislation establishing the courts should sunset after five years, which would add a measure of review to the process and give Congress and the President the ability to see what has worked and what hasn't. Sulmasy's approach has many critics, including those who wonder how it differs, in practice, from a bill that would simply give the president indefinite detention authority outside the laws of war. They also worry that an extra-judicial court would be seen as illegitimate and therefore would not be effective. Yesterday, I spoke to Sulmasy about his proposal.

Aug 5 2009, 8:10AM

The CBO Might Be Wrong, But Orszag Might Not Be Right

A group of health economists finally gave the president some good news with a letter arguing that we can bend the long-term costs of health care with Obama's proposed Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC). The IMAC would be like a Supreme Court for health care, delivering binding recommendations to doctors and insurers affecting procedure and cost. Some liberal blogs are counting this a win for Obama and budget director Peter Orszag against the Congressional Budget Office, which had expressed doubts about IMAC's ability to restrain costs. But I'm not as optimistic about the council.

Aug 5 2009, 6:30AM

Clinton's Trip: Good For Kim Jong Il, Too?

After Bill Clinton secured the release of journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling from North Korea, former UN Ambassador John Bolton suggested this was "rewarding bad behavior" and that Clinton's trip, despite its apparent success, had legitimized Kim Jong Il's regime. Is he right? Did North Korea successfully use Lee and Ling as pawns for legitimacy?--and, if the two are now safe, does it really matter if that's the case?

Aug 5 2009, 12:11AM

Aug 4 2009, 11:25PM

Those Talented Clintons, Defying Expectations Again

"Don't do it! Bill will embarrass you!"

How many times did Barack Obama receive that advice as he was mulling over whether to hire Hillary Clinton for his cabinet?

"Don't do it! The Clintons will leak. They'll create an administration within the administration. They're undisciplined!"

That, uh, sage advice really did form the conventional wisdom when news first leaked that the former first lady was on the short list to be Secretary of State.

Turns out... those Clintons really do know how to seize the moment. Not only has Hillary Clinton been a team player, her team -- still made up of loyalists -- doesn't leak. They don't try to undercut other power centers. (No, I don't think the Gregory Craig rumors are coming from State. And I don't put much stock in those rumors either.) They're humble and effective. When they make mistakes, they get things right, quickly.

And Bill Clinton... his "entanglements" haven't been an issue. Either have his library donors or his foreign travels. He's behaved himself in public, by which I mean he has never undermined the administration's policy arguments, even going so far as to agree with their Clinton-era-corrections to policy approaches. He has not upstaged his wife. He's matured since the presidential campaign. He now seems to understand the way news cycles work in the Net era. And today, as we've seen, he can -- and will -- drop everything at a moment's notice to do the administration a favor.

To add a contrary note to this musing on how great the Clintons are, there is a chance that the rapid acquiescence of the administration to the DPRK request for Bill Clinton's presence might give every punk dictator the idea to kidnap Americans and then demand a meeting with Bill Clinton in order to release them. After all, as of a few weeks ago, our formal policy toward the DPRK was one of non-response to their provocations. Allowing Bill Clinton to meet with Kim Jong Ill is a gesture of respect.

It's also a great intelligence gathering opportunity.

.....Mr. President, this is Leon. I've got a few folks in my office who're very interested in what you think of Dear Leader's health....

Who won today? Is this a zero sum question? What do you think?

Aug 4 2009, 6:34PM

Shocked. SHOCKED. Astoturfing Exists. ... Now What?

In eight years of writing about politics, nothing gets people angrier than when I try to make the case that most activists and most journalists practice politics differently, have different worldviews, and are both forces for good in the democracy. 3....2....

It is easy and comfortable to assume that because you've discovered the presence of Astroturf activism, there is no there there, or there is nothing that sustains or nourishes the Astroturfing. The point is not to question whether conservatives are artificially magnifying their voices -- yes of course they are, predictably and not in secret -- it's that real anxiety and real enthusiasm provide a catalyst for the Astroturfing to work -- and the Astroturfing provides a catalyst for the anxiety and enthusiasm to manifest.

Peter Daou makes some provocative arguments here -- the liberal base is a bit disillusioned with Obama, Republicans sense opportunity, etc, and I think he is right. And I think that other liberals who assume that somehow because they associate THEIR side with reasoned argument and the OTHER side with blatant demagoguery, the argument ought to be closed -- well, they're replicating the mistake that disillusioned partisans tend to make: if it ain't going right, it MUST be because some outside factor -- usually the media -- is screwing up. Sometimes the media does screw it up. Sometimes, it's just screwed up.

Democrats were able to defeat President Bush on Social Security because they found a way to capitalize on inherent skepticism about forcing that cherished institution to change. Make no mistake, the effort to defeat Social Security reform won because of a mix of organic anxiety, inorganic organizing, focus grouped-messaging and wealthy people and interests writing large checks. Today, we're at a similar juncture, except for the fact that the wealthy, organized/organic/inorganic protesters are on the other side of an issue. Democrats may have used different tactics -- protesting outside of places as opposed to inside of them -- but that's not terribly germane. It's true that health care reform in general is more popular than Social Security reform was, but that fact is not mutually exclusive with the fact that, because Democrats have to get to 60 votes in the Senate, there are meaningful and relevant anxieties too. The point is that, in terms of enthusiasm, on health care the right is capitalizing on a weak "pro" side and actual anxiety in the same way that the left capitalized on an weak "pro" side and actual anxiety on Social Security. Even if you think that the Dems have the right policy on both issues, the strategic analogy is, I think, valid. Social Security privatization failed because it was not popular, because Democrats out-gamed Republicans, and the because the Bush administration failed to find an effective argument that outgamed the gamers. And for a few other reasons too.

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Aug 4 2009, 3:53PM

Unlock Obama's Brain: A Solution For GTMO

What to make of the inconsistent (but honestly reported) news of the past two weeks about the administration's policy for trying Guantanamo detainees? Knowledgeable sources call them trial balloons, even if they're not officially sanctioned.

One thing should be manifestly clear: the president's Guantanamo Detainee Review Taskforce has not arrived at any particular solution, and the White House hasn't figured out what long-term policy should be. Occasionally, when the White House tells a reporter that "no decision has been made," they mean to use the line as a stalling tactic.

Aug 4 2009, 3:10PM

Flag@Whitehouse.gov

Noticed by the GOP leadership, the White House is asking Americans to send in reports about "disinformation" in the health care debate. They've provided an e-mail address: flag@whitehouse.gov. Wonder what the ratio of friendly to hostile e-mails will be....

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Aug 4 2009, 2:42PM

64 Years Later, Americans Support The Bomb

Total disarmament--and end to nuclear weapons, period--is the White House's goal when it comes to nuclear weapons, but even as nuclear disarmament is a watchword of the post-Soviet and Islamic-terrorist era of global security, Americans support the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, by wide margins. From a Quinnipiac poll released today:

Sixty-four years after America dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American voters say 61 - 22 percent, with 16 percent undecided, that it was the right thing to do, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Weaker support for President Harry Truman's decision is 49 - 29 percent among Democrats, 51 - 27 percent among women, and 50 - 32 percent among voters 18 - 34 years old, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

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Aug 4 2009, 12:33PM

White House Strategy: Ridicule The Angry Republicans

The White House and Democratic officials, surprised by the angry words thrown at Democratic lawmakers in their first weekend of August town hall meetings, are scrambling to put together a strategy to minimize the effects of what they see as an organized campaign to disrupt the meetings and spread anxiety about health care reform and President Obama.

A key part of the developing strategy: ridicule the opposition -- and portray those who disrupt meetings with loud chants and signs as part of the same ilk of people who showed up at campaign rallies for John McCain and Sarah Palin right after the 2008 Republican National Convention. At those rallies, some supporters hurled racist remarks and displayed objectionable signs; McCain himself was forced to respond to a questioner who called Obama a "Muslim," to the applause of others in the crowd. To this day, McCain aides maintain that the media inflated the number of reactionaries in the crowd, abetted by an Obama campaign that was all too happy to point them out.

A party strategist e-mailed around a clip from Rep. Lloyd Doggett's town hall meeting. At one point, a sign featuring Nazi lettering can be seen. Another strategist with ties to the White House made sure to point out that a popular sign at these rallies features Obama, in Shepherd Fairy-esque ink, as the Joker (although it's not clear how many signs have been seen at actual rallies.) . A White House official pointed to press secretary Robert Gibbs's comparison to the 2000 "protest" at Miami-Dade county election headquarters organized and peopled with young conservative lawyers.

Patronizing opponents is a tried and true tradition in Washington, and Democrats have used the tactic with success. They ridiculed the hundreds of thousands of conservatives who protested the stimulus package as "tea baggers."

But Republicans are just as responsible for the perception. The folks who tend to show up at protest events tend to be to the right of the mean in the party. And, as the spread of the birther movement demonstrates, not a small chunk of these Republicans are reactionaries. The challenge for the White House and Democrats is that they find a way to separate genuinely anxious conservatives who ask good questions -- even if those questions are provided by conservative groups -- and the crazies who tend to pack town hall meetings.

The challenge for Republicans is to prevent the media from labeling everyone who attends a meeting with a Democratic lawmaker and who calls him or herself a conservative as a crazy person. Some polling suggests that the percentage of Republicans who don't know whether President Obama was born in the United States is fairly high, although it is hard to say how much of that confusion stems from ignorance or from a generally jaundiced, perhaps racist, view of the President.

A range of smaller, ideologically conservative interest groups are organizing the protests. Finding pockets of activist-oriented arch-conservatives in places like Texas, Missouri and Indiana is easy, especially if the set goal is to defeat Obama-care, which is being sold to these people as the approach of government-run health care, something that these folks have been worried about for years. Add to the mix a desire to hand the progressive President and his agenda a decisive defeat.

The more troublesome question for Democratic strategists is why the major Democratic groups, including Organizing for America, the labor unions, Health Care for America Now, seem to be flatfooted and unable to match the much smaller conservative organizing capacity in these critical districts. One answer is that the media pays attention to the loudest voices, which are coming from the right. The other is that organizing around major -- even popular -- reforms of existing institutions is tough. The Democrats don't have a single bill right now, and the elite left is worried about what's not in the cards -- a public plan -- and is therefore fairly unenthusiastic. If the liberal elite isn't enthusiastic, the liberal base -- less knowledgeable -- will be as well.

To focus minds, Democrats are coordinating TV and radio ad blitzes, including the biggest expenditures by the Democratic National Committee to date. President Obama, his cabinet and his vice president will be ubiquitous. Quickly responding to disinformation will be a key goal, an administration official said, pointing to this morning's release of a video from Linda Douglass, a former television and print reporter who serves as a key White House health care adviser, which rebutted a misleading video posted on the Drudge Report.

Aug 4 2009, 6:30AM

Question Of The Day: The Town-Hall Battleground

In August, liberals and conservatives will work to turn out support at town-hall events held by members of Congress. Each side will hope to be the loudest voice in the crowd. Who will win? Will conservatives shout down Democratic senators and congressmen? Or will reform-backers drown them out?

Aug 3 2009, 7:00PM

The Day In Politics, 8/3

Today, we learned that Media Matters might air an anti-Lou Dobbs ad during Dobbs's show on CNN; Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius got booed loudly at a town-hall in Philadelphia; the White House has decided to cast health insurers as the enemy; a liberal group followed suit with a TV ad; the industry's top lobbyist says insurers won't take the bait; the national debt grew a trillion dollars in 180 days; and Pollster.com has charts galore on GOP 2012ers.

Aug 3 2009, 5:40PM

The Invisible Primary, 8/3

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

Tim Pawlenty penned an op-ed in The Washington Post this morning on health care; Mike Huckabee's PAC donated $2,500 to Iowa gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats; Eric Cantor is leading a GOP congressional delegation to Israel; Mike Pence told Fox this weekend that he has no plans to run for president in 2012; according to Dan Balz's new book on the 2008 campaign, John McCain's VP short list included Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, Charlie Crist, and Bobby Jindal as well as Michael Bloomberg and Joe Lieberman; and Pollster.com is now rife with charts on 2012 potentials.

Aug 3 2009, 5:09PM

Deadline, What Deadline?

Late on Monday, Sen. Mike Enzi, not exactly a household name but an important figure in the health care debate, said that he didn't feel obligated to meet a September 15 deadline to pass a healthcare bill. The Wyoming Republican is just the latest to balk at the idea of a deadline. Recall that the White House wanted a health care bill before Congress left for its August recess. That got rolled back and the middle of September has been the latest line in the sand. But the truth is that all of these deadlines are pretty useless.

Aug 3 2009, 4:30PM

Journalism's Problem Isn't Gawker. It's Advertising.

by Clement Tan

Washington Post's Ian Shapira fired the latest salvo in the ongoing debate about paid media content with his thoughtful "rant" over the weekend about Gawker "stealing" his story. But he raised the bar by invoking legal considerations, wondering aloud if Gawker's (mis)use of his work amounted to copyright infringement.

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Aug 3 2009, 3:55PM

Debt Grows By A Trillion In @ 180 Days

This number won't surprise economic beat reporters, but it gives the Republican Party another short-term talking point: the national debt has eclipsed $11 trillion for the first time and is about 1.04 trillion higher than when President Obama took office. (By the way: the GOP talking point accusing Obama of doubling the debt or doing something else with it aren't trouble... George W. Bush's term saw the debt increase by more than $4 trillion. And the President's budgeting is a bit more honest than President Bush's: it includes war spending.) By the way #2: during his press briefing today, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that President Obama "has made a very clear commitment not to raise taxes on middle class families, period." Is there any scenario wherein this could change? "The president has been clear, very clear." And "Let me be precise the President's clear commitment is not to raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year." So -- just to be clear -- that's not the same thing as saying that under no circumstances would the president raise these taxes.

Aug 3 2009, 1:16PM

The Senate Should Kill Cash for Clunkers

As Republican senators rush to kill Obama's wildly popular Cash for Clunkers, which gives new car buyers up to $4500 for their old cars, it's time to think seriously about whether we should spend another $2 billion on this giveaway. I wrote a fair amount about this program last week including an FAQ and an update, but now I'm pretty sure that Cash for Clunkers is a bad policy that doesn't deserve a $2 billion double-down.

Aug 2 2009, 11:48AM

The Sunday Shows In Seven Sentences Or Less

Missed the Sunday Shows? Here's all you need to know....

1. Taxes. On ABC's This Week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner channeled Clinton-era Sec/Treas Robert Rubin, contending that deficit reduction was the key to long-term economic prosperity. But the headline news, as recounted by the host himself, is that Geithner refused to rule out new taxes on the middle class. (The President promised during his campaign that families with incomes of more than $250,000 wouldn't see their taxes go up by a dime.) Geithner said that administration would do "what is necessary" to fix the economy.

2. Lawrence Summers, still finding his sea legs as an economic communicator, said that the President would pursue no policies that "are primarily burdening middle-class families." Summers appeared on Face the Nation and Meet the Press.

3. Alan Greenspan is confident about an economic recovery and believes that TARP worked well.

4. John McCain gave President Obama an "F" on and said he's not sure whether he'll vote for the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor. He also said he was disappointed at the personal attacks leveled against Ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin. McCain said he opposes the House bill authorizing more money for "cash for clunkers."

5. Harold Ford, Jr. and J.C. Watts discussed race and health care on Meet the Press. Progressives in the 'sphere seem unimpressed with Ford's performance; conservatives in the 'sphere seem disappointed with what Watts had to say. On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Jim DeMint predicted Americans would "take to the streets" against health care in August.

6. Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson promoted their new book, "The Battle for America, 2008," on Meet.