The Atlantic Politics Channel

What Palin's Really Up To. (Hint: She Wants To Fight.)

Fri,03 Jul 2009 23:58:59 GMT

Assuming there is no scandal shoe about to drop, to understand what Gov. Sarah Palin is doing, we ought to begin by taking her at her word. I readily admit that her statement today wasn't terribly clear, which is quite telling itself: she doesn't quite know why she is doing what she's doing, ALL CAPS notwithstanding. She can't explain it to herself, and so she certainly can't explain it to others. But it's not that complicated to get the gist: she's "not retreating," she's advancing. Palin, in Alaska, is a sitting duck for the people and forces she believes are ruining the country. She can't fight back -- she can't protect her family, her values, her worldview -- while she's governor. At the same time, her desire, perhaps conscious, perhaps not, to get into the mix -- to be invited to the fancy Washington dinners, to be courted by these very forces -- is irresistably pulling her towards the very fight she seeks.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that Palin has a grand strategy that relies on subterfuge, prestidigitation or rhetorical concealment. She has few close advisers, and she is prone to ignore their advice. She keeps her own counsel. She believes what she says (and implies): that she is a national political figure, that her destiny (and I think she capitalizes the D) is in the continental 48, that her personal characteristics are mocked by the elite because the elite cannot understand them, that her family and children are subject to relentless, negative and highly damaging personal attacks, and that there is no longer a place for her in the Alaska government.

]]>The Vanity Fair profile and the Politico e-mails had nothing to do with her decision today. A simple Google News search will provide a better explanation. All those interviews: Palin, Levi, the baby; all the legislative blowback when she returned to Alaska after the campaign; all the adulation (and attention) she received when she took time away from her day job and stepped into her celebu-Sarah persona. Whether you believe that Palin is complicit in the exploitation of her family or not, you cannot help but believe that she means what she says she feels.

As a governor, she is ineffective; the moment she decides not to run for re-election, she had two choices: either untether herself from political customs and be the governor who spoke truth to power, or surrender to the whims of a legislature and governing apparatus that really grew to - not just dislike her, but hate her. Both options, she must have realized, are entirely untenable. Her relationship with Democrats and Republicans was irritable on good days, and her attempts to straighten her back and yell drew derisive laughter. For someone who has dipped a leg or two into the whirlpool of national politics, the contrast must be scalding. People who know Palin say that she cannot wait to - really wants to - play the role that she believes she now must play.

An ambitious, talented, ordinary American with an ordinary American's quirkiness and foibles was thrust into the spotlight (and with no small amount of thrusting forward on her part) and found that the real world confirmed in so many ways the beliefs she harbored about the elite and the moneyed class and the cultural cognoscenti.

She's in luck. The cultural and polite elite cannot stand Sarah Palin. In their view, her personal style grates; her intellect is sub-par; she is a walking mockery-making machine; she is suspicious, ignorant, oblivious, dishonest and dangerously casual with the facts. The elites v. Sarah Palin is just the latest incarnation in the great American culture war, and Palin no longer wants to fight with one hand tied behind her back. She will do so, ironically, from comfortable places. There are hundreds and thousands of conservative activists who see her as the embodiment of something worth embodying, who bonded with her when she was first subjected to the scorn, and who are confused and angry about the world in Barack Obama's hands. Whether she runs for president or not, this crowd likes her; it makes her comfortable; it accepts her family, and it is where she wants to be.

With a few exceptions, almost every Republican I talk to in Washington quakes at the thought of her being their presidential nominee in 2012 (although a few wonder slyly if she'll go away if she's offered up as a sacrifice that year.)

Three Theories of Palin's Resignation

Fri,03 Jul 2009 21:27:54 GMT

Sarah Palin's stunning announcement that she'd not only decline to seek reelection as Alaska's Governor in 2010 but that she'd resign her term later this month caught everyone by surprise. After all, can you think of another presidential candidate who resigned their office to seek the presidency? Jimmy Carter and Mitt Romney had left their governorships when they sought the White House. Bill Clinton remained as Arkansas governor when he sought the presidency. George McClellan was fired by Lincoln before he ran for the presidency in 1864. The last person I can think of who left government service to run for the presidency was Dwight Eisenhower who gave up his NATO command in the Spring of 1952 and garnered the GOP presidendtial nomination a couple of months later. That's far different from cutting out of elective office 18 months before you're scheduled to leave.

Okay, so why would Palin do this on a Friday before a holday, traditionally a day for dumping bad news? A couple of theories:

1. She has more bad news to report. There's something going on with her family again. There's more to come with the state's finance. Whatever. There's no good reason for her to suddenly up and quit the governorship, her one claim on elective experience.

2. She wants the money. Palin is probably turning down tons of lucrative speaking offers, corporate boards and others ways of getting righ while she bides her time waiting for the presidency. Maybe she just cant say no to the money any longer?

3. She's totally impulsive. Assuming this wasn't a well calculated, move maybe she's just being utterly impulsive. She got sick of the job, sick of dealing with declining revenue, sick of having to stay close to Juneau and Wasilla when she really wants to be in Manchester and Des Moines.

I can't explain why Palin who abandon the people of Alaska before she finishes her first term as governor. But I suspect not that many Alaskans will be complaining.

The GOP's "Rebuilding Year"

Fri,03 Jul 2009 14:02:09 GMT

If Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty runs for president in 2012 -- and early signs suggest he is beginning to lay that groundwork -- he'll have two clear things to offer: He's an affable Republican who's shown he can win a key state, and he's a fiscal conservative who's ready to exploit any backlash to Barack Obama's big government. In an interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival Thursday, Pawlenty presented himself as a bulwark against federal spending. "The country cannot sustain the level of financial commitments that we have now, particularly in the entitlement programs. If we don't change it, we're going to have the government equivalent of the mortgage foreclosure crisis, and it's going to come relatively soon." (Video of interview to be posted on TheAtlantic.com early next week, along with video of other interviews from the Festival.)

Pawlenty, who was on John McCain's short list for vice president, is on every great mention list for 2012 GOP candidates. "I don't know what I'm going to do be doing three years from now," demurs Pawlenty, who announced last month he will not run for a third term next year. He says he wants to travel the country and speak out on issues, but beyond that, "I don't know what my future holds."

Pawlenty acknowledged that the GOP is struggling. The president is popular, the Democrats control the government, and the GOP is the victim of several self-inflicted wounds, namely Ensign and Sanford. "If the Republican party were a sports team and the coach and general manager were sitting here, he or she would say, 'It's a rebuilding year. We gotta get some new draft picks, we gotta make some trades, we gotta do things differently.' "

One question is whether Pawlenty, a married father of two who's a convert to evangelical Christianianty, would be able to claim that his is the party of family values. Pawlenty insists it can, but concedes that Sanford makes this positioning more complex, at least for now. "For Republicans and others, if you say you're about one thing and you do something else, people don't like that. It's a basic fact of life...We're going to have to earn back the support of the American voter, that's for sure."

Obama's Inversion Of Harry And Louise

Fri,03 Jul 2009 11:50:13 GMT

President Obama's arguments for health reform aren't without their fire-and-brimstone warnings.

As his opponents have sought to paint him as a liberal idealist, willing to spend a trillion of dollars to implement a big-government health care plan and place a big check mark on the liberal wish list, Obama has hit back on that notion hard--and he's done it, perhaps, by taking a page from the playbook of Harry and Louise.

Harry and Louise, of course, were the TV ad couple who helped torpedo the Clinton-led health reform effort in 1994, doing so with a simple message: if this reform plan goes through, your current health coverage will be taken away.
]]> It was a powerful message, and the fear of coverage being taken away still resonates with Americans uncertain of Obama's plan today.

But what the president has done is turn that same argument around. His basic message: your health coverage will be taken away if we don't reform health care this year.

His arguments for reform have focused heavily on rising costs and the unsustainability of the current system. His public remarks on the matter are rife with figures about how much costs have risen and will rise in the future, and how soon the nation won't be able to pay them.

"In the last nine years, premiums have risen three times faster than wages. If we don nothing, they will rise even higher. In recent years, over one third of small businesses have reduced benefits and many have dropped coverage altogether since the early '90s," Obama told the audience at his town hall meeting on health care in Annandale, Virginia Wednesday.

"If we do not act, more will lose coverage and more will lose their jobs. Unless we act, within a decade, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care," Obama said.

Obama's economic rhetoric is all about how things can't remain the same. It's the same point the Harry and Louise ad made, but backward, and in Obama's version, the "naysayers" who oppose health reform are the ones who play fast and loose with the coverage Americans currently enjoy. And as polling indicates that Americans are concerned heavily with costs, the president has, in turn, stuck to telling people about the costs of not passing his plan.

In Obama's rhetorical system, there is no status quo to preserve: the fundamental truth about health care is that it's changing, rapidly and frighteningly. Leaving the current system in place is what will cause people to lose what they already have.

It's not that 46 million Americans are uninsured and that we can and must do better, as the richest nation in the world, to ensure them--an argument we heard from Democratic candidates like John Edwards and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign--it's that we have to do something immediately, reactively, because current coverage is being threatened.

"This isn't just about those Americans without health care. It's about every American--because if we do not act to bring down costs, everybody's health care will be in jeopardy," Obama said at Wednesday's town hall.

And so part of his rhetoric is about shaking people with fear into supporting his reforms. If Harry and Louise made people afraid of passing Clinton's reform plan, Obama is making people afraid of not passing his.

Confronting the Harry and Louise argument directly during the question-and-answer segment of the town hall in Annandale, Obama inverted it perfectly.

"Many of you may be satisfied with your health care now. What you've got to do is project, if current trends continue, are you still going to be happy with your health care five years from now? Will you have health care five years from now?" Obama asked.

Perhaps learning from the Clinton-led effort, Obama has made sure the "naysayers" aren't the only ones with scary arguments to win people to their side.

The Democratic Party's Health Care Ad

Thu,02 Jul 2009 20:40:16 GMT

The Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America are looking to raise money from supporters with a new TV ad promoting health care reform. Though they're asking for money to put the ad on air, the DNC isn't hurting for cash, unless you compare it to its GOP counterpart. The DNC has $12.1 million in the bank, with $5.6 million owed out, as of its latest financial disclosure. It could probably air the ad now if it wanted to, but sending it around to supporters makes for a better fundraising tool--and the RNC, by contrast, has $21.5 million with no debt. The ad went out to supporters today in a fundraising e-mail.

Holding fast to President Obama's messaging strategy on health care so far, the ad paints U.S. health care as unsustainable, with individuals attesting that, for instance, employer provided insurance only covers you until you're laid off. See the ad below:
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No Swimming Pools Or Frisbee Golf

Thu,02 Jul 2009 18:56:07 GMT

Time's Michael Scherer illustrates Joe Biden's task in keeping stimulus spending in line. For the White House, it's critical that the $787 billion gets spent efficiently and appropriately, and it's worth noticing that we haven't heard as many rumblings about ridiculous pork projects as one might expect from a spending initiative of this size: there haven't been any major bridges to nowhere or Woodstock museums--though Sen. Tom Coburn outlined 100 examples in a report this month that, he says, are questionable. But stimulus critics seem more concerned with government borrowing and debt, and their macroeconomic effects, than whatever pork might be coming out of it; in that regard, sheriff Biden has kept the White House out of trouble.

Washington Post Draws Fire With "Salon" Series

Thu,02 Jul 2009 16:58:11 GMT

UPDATE: Post CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth has canceled the series of dinners, saying, "Absolutely, I'm disappointed...This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren't vetted. They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom."

The Washington Post found itself the object of much criticism this morning after Politico's Mike Allen reported on a Post "salon" series, promising private, off-the-record, non-confrontational dinner discussions with Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and Washington Post reporters and editors, for $25,000 per person, marketed to lobbyists. "Bring your organization's CEO or executive director literally to the table," reads a flier. The dinners are to be hosted at the home of Post CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth; the topic of the first one, advertised int the flier, is health care.

Evidently a lobbyist felt uncomfortable with the ethics of it--a newspaper appearing to peddle influence in a $25,000-per-ticket lobbying session, serving as interlocutor between lobbyists and the White House, assuring the cooperation of its editorial staff, and perhaps the chance to influence reporters--and gave a copy of the flier to Allen. Lots of bloggers shared the sentiment. The Post's Ezra Klein, one of the paper's most notable health care experts, called it "appalling" and said he would have refused to attend, had he been invited or informed.
]]>called it the "fastest damage control ever."

The business of media-organized conferences, roundtables, seminars, and presentations works, in most cases, similarly to the everyday sale of newspapers and magazines. The editorial staff has something to offer in the way of content--information, expertise, relationships with prominent sources who will talk about health care in front of an audience (booking power), good questions for the experts and an ability to moderate the discussion--and the business side sells that content to advertisers or attendees. (UPDATE: The Atlantic has an events business of its own, Atlantic Live.)

But the Post managed to outrage a broad swath of people with this flier. Just look at the bloggers who denounced it: the criticism didn't come from left, right, or center, but from all three--because the concern was about basic ethics, and nobody likes sleaze. Beyond that, the story played into two political narratives about lobbyists and the media. Conservatives don't like the mainstream media establishment because they think it has too cozy a relationship with the Obama administration; subsequently, conservatives impugned the Post as a pimp for the White House. Liberals are wary of lobbyist influence; they criticized it from the other end, as a cash-for-access scheme.

Beyond the basic ethics of it, it's unsurprising that nobody jumped to defend the Post after Allen's story, given the concerns it played into on both ends of the spectrum.

Is Mike Huckabee The New Jesse Jackson?

Thu,02 Jul 2009 16:04:32 GMT

Michael Barone has a fascinating insight that, dare I say, I'd never really contemplated before.

Huckabee or a candidate with a similar profile can corner the votes of evangelical and born-again Christians and, starting with Iowa, can round up a significant number of delegates. It is conceivable that such a candidate, with the help of Republicans' winner-take-all delegate allocation rules and if he continues

Californians Are Sinking Themselves

Thu,02 Jul 2009 15:55:00 GMT

The world's eighth-largest economy has just gone belly-up. When midnight tolled on Tuesday night with legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger still deadlocked over how to resolve the state's staggering $24 billion budget shortfall, California became unable to pay its bills. The state will have to begin issuing IOUs to its creditors as early as Thursday. It is the worst budget crisis in the state's modern history.

South Carolina GOP: Mark Sanford Must Go

Thu,02 Jul 2009 15:50:39 GMT

Gov. Mark Sanford's long and emotional interview with The Associated Press Tuesday appears to have been the final straw for South Carolina's Republican establishment, much of which is now actively seeking his resignation.

While Sanford seemed to have weathered the storm in the brutal days immediately following his admission of an affair with an Argentine woman, his support has cratered in the wake of the AP interview in which he talked of his "tragic" and "forbidden" love for his "soul mate" and admitted to having "crossed lines" with a handful of other women.

Helen Thomas: Not Even Nixon Tried to Control the Media Like Obama

Thu,02 Jul 2009 15:47:23 GMT

Following a testy exchange during Wednesday's briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.

"Nixon didn't try to do that," Thomas said. "They couldn't control (the media). They didn't try.

Democrats To Raise Money On Twitter

Thu,02 Jul 2009 14:24:58 GMT

The new tech wave in politics is now going a step further: Democrats are raising money directly on Twitter.

Through a new program launched by ActBlue, an online fundraising group launched in 2004 that channels online donations to Democratic candidates, Democratic supporters can make donations by tweeting the amount and the candidate or party committee they want to give it to.
]]>donate $amount @candidate via @actblue"...and the money will go to the candidate or committee of one's choosing (assuming that candidate has registered through ActBlue. The Democratic National Committee, for instance, already has one).

It may not raise tons of money for Democrats, but it fits with the Obama-era model of raise money in low dollar amounts on the Internet and striving hard to engage tech-savvy voters online. It also turns Internet giving into a mobile entterprise. Lots of people tweet from their phones and blackberries--something, presumably, supporters with ActBlue accounts might find themselves doing from rallies.

Unemployment: Still Rising, By .1 Percent

Thu,02 Jul 2009 13:54:17 GMT

The unemployment rate continued to rise today, from 9.4 percent in May to 9.5 percent in June, with 467,000 nonfarm payroll jobs being lost. (Click here to see the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, which includes breakdowns by sector.)

It was a smaller jump than we've seen in previous months. Last month, BLS announced a rise from 8.9 percent to 9.4 percent. From November to March, the average monthly job loss total was 670,000; from April to June, it's been 436,000. Still, this month's drop in payroll employment was more than expected.

The political calculus on unemployment hasn't changed much. President Obama, in an interview with Bloomberg in June, predicted unemployment would hit 10 percent by the end of the year, giving himself some room as observers wondered when the continued job losses would begin to hurt his high standing in the public's eye.
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But that's not going to stop Republicans from hitting him every time the rate goes up. A press release from the Republican National Committee today charged that the "facts belie Obama's 'rose-colored forecast,'" questioning his promises of stimulus job creation, while House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) hit Obama for pursuing health care and cap and trade in light of the unemployment situation: "Inexplicably, instead of focusing on jobs and restoring the financial security that has been lost by millions of struggling families, the President continues to push an agenda that the majority of Americans are uneasy with," he said in a statement released this morning.

The Day In Politics, 7/1

Wed,01 Jul 2009 23:30:57 GMT

Today, we learned that South Carolina Democrats are calling on Gov. Mark Sanford to resign; so are a host of others; and Sen. James Inhofe predicts no more than 35 Senate votes for the cap and trade bill.

We also pondered what Al Franken will be like as a senator; some more thoughts on Obama, Truman, and Don't Ask, Don't Tell; a court fight over detainee confessions obtained through harsh interrogations; and the recent Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin.

Tomorrow: President Obama departs for Camp David for the Fourth of July.

The Invisible Primary, 7/1

Wed,01 Jul 2009 23:00:26 GMT

Tracking the GOP race to 2012

Gov. Tim Pawlenty certified Al Franken as the victor in Minnesota's 2008 Senate race, and was declared by one blogger as the real winner in the race.