The Atlantic Politics Channel

The Atlantic Politics Channel http://politics.theatlantic.com/ en Copyright 2009 Tue,24 Nov 2009 19:11:27 GMT http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sarah Palin, Worst Veep Pick Ever? Not So Fast. Sarah Palin's book tour has aroused the ire of McCain staffers and everyone who thinks she is utterly unqualified to be president or have been selected as the vice presidential nominee by the septuagenarian candidate of the Republican Party. They point to her miniscule tenure in the Alaska governor's office, fumbled interviews and seeming lack of knowledge about much having to do with running the country. But if you think about the vice presidential selections since World War II began, is Sarah Palin even the worst? A quick review of contenders:
2. Richard Nixon. Before the Watergate, before the invasion of Cambodia, before the Disraeli-like expansion of government under his tenure--EPA, OSHA, affirmative action--there was Richard Nixon, the vice president. Qualified? Sure, he'd been a senator and a congressman and a McCarthyite witch hunter. Suppose, given what we know now about Nixon's paranoia, Eisenhower had died in office. Would you have wanted Nixon dealing with Stalin? Khrushchev during the height of the Cold War? Leaving aside how he might have handled the Cuban Missile Crisis had he beaten John Kennedy in 1960, was the Tricky Dick of the 50s really someone you wanted to see in the Oval Office? You can say some good things about his presidential tenure, but the combination of his personality and the 50s and him as commander in chief is a frightening thought.

3. Henry Wallace. I hate to speak ill of a former editor of my alma mater, The New Republic. But Wallace, FDR's second vice president, after John Nance Garner and before Harry Truman, had a long history as being a naif about Soviet expansionism and dreamy notions of one-world government. Thank God FDR dumped him from the ticket in 1944 and his 1948 third-party progressive candidacy didn't derail Harry Truman's reelection bid.

4. Geraldine Ferraro. The third term congresswoman from Queens and favorite of the late House Speaker Tip O'Neill was a bold choice for Walter Mondale. But was the first woman to be selected as vice presidential nominee by a major party really ready for office? Her husband skated past corruption charges. Her hapless 1998 Senate bid ended with defeat by Chuck Schumer and her career as a prosecutor, while admirable, wasn't the best Oval Office prep.

5. John Edwards. We now know what a rapscallion and liar Edwards was. A few thousand votes different in Ohio and he would have been President John Kerry's Vice President. The thought is not deeply comforting. He had a trial lawyer's facility with words and a genuine compassion for the poor, but was he so much more qualified than Sarah Palin after four years in the U.S. Senate?

I'm leaving out some picks that I think get a bad rap. Dan Quayle was qualified to be veep. So was Thomas Eaagleton, the Missouri Senator whose nomination got pulled after it emerged that he'd undergone electroshock therapy. Most have been more than qualified: George H.W. Bush, Henry Cabot Lodge. You could argue that the worst pick of all was the one with the longest resume: Dick Cheney. In other words, the doubts about Palin are justified, but some historical perspective is important, too. We've seen worse.
]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/sarah_palin_worst_veep_pick_ever_not_so_fast.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/sarah_palin_worst_veep_pick_ever_not_so_fast.php Promo Tue,24 Nov 2009 19:11:27 GMT Get Your Political Holiday Gear new online store, replete with fleece blankets, mugs, and signed copies of Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe's book, "The Audacity to Win." Only DCCC supporters, however, will get the grand opening buy-one-item-get-one-half-off deals, as promo codes went out via email.

If you're a pro-business or national security conservative, there's gear for you, too: Mitt Romney's Free and Strong America PAC is selling limited edition holiday packages. You get a knit blanket and two mugs for $150. (Side question: will Mike Huckabee and Fox News criticize Romney for offering "holiday" packages instead of "Christmas" packages?)

So, in case you feel like politicizing Christmas, Hanukkah, or both, the DCCC and Romney are there for you. ]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/get_your_political_holiday_gear.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/get_your_political_holiday_gear.php Promo Tue,24 Nov 2009 18:45:33 GMT "Enough Of That, Let's Talk Climate Change." ]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/enough_of_that_lets_talk_climate_change.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/enough_of_that_lets_talk_climate_change.php Featured Promo Tue,24 Nov 2009 18:15:28 GMT Obama: I Intend To Finish The Job
Obama's response:

I can tell you, as I've said before that it is in our strategic interest, in our national security interest, that [we make sure] al Qaeda ...cannot operate effectively in those areas...Afghanistan's stability is important to that process...after eight years--some of those years in which we did not have, I think, either the resources or the strategy to get the job done--it is my intention to finish the job, and I feel very confident that, when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we're doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive...it's going to be very important to recognize that the Afghan people are ultimately going to have to provide for their own security, so we will be discussing that process whereby Afghan security forces are properly trained and equipped to do the job...in order for us to succeed there, you've got to have a comprehensive strategy that includes civilian and diplomatic efforts...

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His statement that "I intend to finish the job" stood out as an indication of a strong commitment to the war effort. Those are the same words Republicans used to argue for the war effort in Iraq several years ago, and they're the same words Democrats have used to accuse President Bush of neglecting the war in Afghanistan.

So there was no clear answer from the president, and he touched on points that have been made many times as he's weighed the next phase of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. But the "I intend to finish the job" line probably stood out the most.
]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/obama_finish_the_job.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/obama_finish_the_job.php Promo Tue,24 Nov 2009 17:38:40 GMT Obama and The Atlantic On Saturday, before the Senate was scheduled to vote on health care reform that night, Atlantic Media's Ron Brownstein posted this item on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's bill. It may have been the weekend, but it didn't go unread: as it turns out, President Obama made the post required reading for White House senior staff at Monday's meeting, Politico's Mike Allen reported. (UPDATE: TPM reports that Rahm Emanuel assigned it, telling staffers "not to come back to the next day's meeting" if they hadn't read it, according to an administration official.) Here's the post, again, in its entirety:

When I reached Jonathan Gruber on Thursday, he was working his way, page by laborious page, through the mammoth health care bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had unveiled just a few hours earlier. Gruber is a leading health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulted by politicians in both parties. He was one of almost two dozen top economists who sent President Obama a letter earlier this month insisting that reform won't succeed unless it "bends the curve" in the long-term growth of health care costs. And, on that front, Gruber likes what he sees in the Reid proposal. Actually he likes it a lot.
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Gruber may be especially effusive. But the Senate blueprint, which faces its first votes tonight, also is winning praise from other leading health reformers like Mark McClellan, the former director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under George W. Bush and Len Nichols, health policy director at the centrist New America Foundation. "The bottom line," Nichols says, "is the legislation is sending a signal that business as usual [in the medical system] is going to end."

Both the Senate bill's priority on controlling long-term health care costs, and its strategy for doing so, represents a validation for Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT). When Baucus released his health reform proposal last September, after finally terminating months of fruitless negotiations with committee Republicans, Democratic liberals excoriated his plan as a dead end. And on several important fronts--such as subsidies for the uninsured, the role of a public competitor to private insurance companies, and the contribution required from employers who don't insure their workers--Reid moved his product away from Baucus toward approaches preferred by liberals.

But the Reid bill's fiscal strategy, and its vision of how to "bend the curve," almost completely follows Baucus' path from September. Baucus' bill was the first to establish the principle that Congress could expand coverage while reducing the federal deficit; now that's the standard not only for the Senate but also the House reform legislation. And, perhaps even more importantly, the Reid bill maintains virtually all of Baucus ideas' for shifting the medical payment system away from today's fee-for-service model toward an approach that more closely links compensation for providers to results for patients. In the Reid bill, there is some backtracking from Baucus' most aggressive reform proposals, but not much.

Almost everything Baucus proposed to control long-term costs have survived into the final bill. And, with only a few exceptions, that's just about all the systemic reforms analysts from the center to the left have identified as the most promising strategies for changing the economic incentives in the medical system. (The public competitor to private insurance companies championed by the Left would affect who writes the checks in the medical system, but not what the checks are written to pay for.) Most of the other big ideas for controlling costs (such as medical malpractice reform) tend to draw support primarily among Republicans. And since virtually, if not literally, none of them plan to support the final health care bill under any circumstances, the package isn't likely to reflect much of their thinking.

In their November 17 letter to Obama, the group of economists led by Dr. Alan Garber of Stanford University, identified four pillars of fiscally-responsible health care reform. They maintained that the bill needed to include a tax on high-end "Cadillac" insurance plans; to pursue "aggressive" tests of payment reforms that will "provide incentives for physicians and hospitals to focus on quality" and provide "care that is better coordinated"; and establish an independent Medicare commission that can continuously develop and implement "new efforts to improve quality and contain costs." Finally, they said the Congressional Budget Office "must project the bill to be at least deficit neutral over the 10-year budget window and deficit reducing thereafter."

As OMB Director Peter Orszag noted in an interview, the Reid bill met all those tests. The CBO projected that the bill would reduce the federal deficit by $130 billion over its first decade and by as much as $650 billion in its second. (Conservatives, of course, consider those projections unrealistic, but CBO is the only umpire in the game, and Republicans have been happy to trumpet its analyses critical of the Democratic plans.) "Let's use the metric of that letter," said Orszag, who helped shape the health reform debate for years from his earlier posts at CBO and the Brookings Institution. "Deficit neutral; got that. Deficit-reducing second decade, got that. Excise tax: That was retained. Third is the Medicare commission: has that. Fourth is delivery system reforms, bundling payments, hospital acquired infections, readmission rates. It has that. If you go down the checklist of what they said was necessary for a fiscally responsible bill that will move us towards the health care system of the future, this passes the bar."

McClellan, the former Bush official and current director of the Engleberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution, was one of the economists who signed the November letter. McClellan has some very practical ideas for improving the Reid bill (more on those below), but generally he echoes Orszag's assessment of it. "It has got all four of those elements in it," McClellan said in an interview. "They kept a lot of the key elements of the Finance bill that I like. It would be good if more could be done, but this is the right direction to go."

Reid gave ground on one Baucus proposal that the economists identified as a priority-taxing high-end insurance plans. Like many health reformers, the economists who wrote Obama argue that such a tax "will help curtail the growth of private health insurance premiums by creating incentives to limit the costs of plans to a tax-free amount." Amid intense opposition from unions, Reid raised the thresholds at which family plans would face that excise tax from $21,000 to $23,000. But given all the pressure from labor, the more striking thing may have been that Reid didn't increase the thresholds even more; the CBO calculated the proposal, which the House excluded from its bill, would still raise $35 billion annually by 2019. "They held pretty strong," said one administration health care expert. "It's not like unions haven't been making the case that it shouldn't have been a much higher number."

On delivery reform, Reid stayed even closer to the Baucus blueprint. The Finance bill laid out a series of measures to change the way providers are paid for delivering care to Medicare recipients; the hope was that once Medicare instituted these reforms, private insurers would also adopt many of them. "The goal here is that the things we do in Medicare will translate over into the private sector, and there is quite a bit of historical precedence for that," said one Democratic aide involved in drafting the package.

The Baucus delivery reform ideas revolved around two central aims. One was to reward Medicare providers who deliver care more efficiently and penalize those that don't. The Reid bill upholds the major proposals Baucus offered to advance that goal. For instance, hospitals under current law must report on their performance in treating patients for common conditions like heart problems and pneumonia; under the bill, their Medicare payments, for the first time, would be affected by their ranking on those reports. Hospitals would also be penalized if they readmit too many patients after surgery or allow too many to acquire infections while in the hospital itself. Another provision would begin the process of applying such "value-based purchasing" toward other providers like hospice providers and inpatient rehabilitation facilities.

With physicians, the Reid plan takes a step back from the Finance Committee bill but still a long step beyond current law. The Finance Bill proposed automatic reimbursement reductions for doctors who order up the most care for Medicare recipients with similar medical and demographic characteristics. That was meant to respond to the research showing big disparities in spending on medical services for similarly-situated patients in different communities. But, Democratic sources say, that proposal ran into charges that it would promote rationing-and even function as "a death panel by proxy"-by compelling doctors to arbitrarily reduce care. So the final bill takes a less direct route toward a similar end. It requires Medicare to begin studying the utilization patterns of doctors participating in the program. And then it establishes a "values based payment modifier" that would, in a budget-neutral manner, increase reimbursements for physicians found to deliver high-quality care at lower cost, and reduce them for physicians at the other end of that spectrum. "It will, we believe, have the same net effect [as the original proposal]," said the Democratic aide. "It should change behavior around that threshold."

The other set of Baucus proposals were intended to promote more coordination among providers. These have survived almost verbatim into the final bill. The bill encourages groups of providers to establish doctor-led "accountable care organizations" to more comprehensively manage patients' care by allowing them to share in any savings for Medicare they produce. It also establishes a voluntary national pilot of "bundled" payments that would encourage hospitals, doctors and other providers to work more closely together. Another pilot program would test coordinated home-based care for chronically ill seniors.

Finally, the Reid bill maintains the two powerful institutions the Finance legislation proposed to promote these reforms and develop new ones. The one that's attracted the most attention is an independent "Medicare Advisory Board." Under the Senate bill, that board would be required to offer cost-saving proposals when Medicare spending rises too fast; Congress could not reject its proposals without substituting equivalent savings. Since the board would be prohibited from offering changes that raise taxes or "ration care," and since the legislation initially exempts hospitals from its recommendations, it could choose to promote the sort of payment reforms the bill establishes. (More prosaically it might also clear away some of the expensive coverage mandates that Congress imposes on Medicare under pressure from different elements of the medical industry). Given the limitations imposed on the commission, an equally important means to expand these reforms might be a second institution the legislation creates: a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation in the Health and Human Services Department. Though this center has received much less attention than the Medicare Commission, it could have a comparable effect. It would receive $1 billion annually to test payment reforms; in a little known provision, the bill authorizes the HHS Secretary to implement nationwide, without any congressional action, any reform that department actuaries certify will reduce long-term spending. While the House bill omitted the Medicare Commission (a top priority for Obama) it included the innovation center.

No one can say for certain that these initiatives will improve efficiency enough to slow the growth in health care spending. Some are only pilots; others would affect only a small portion of providers' revenue from Medicare. CBO typically evaluates them skeptically: it generally scores little or no savings from most of them. Former CBO director Robert Reischauer, who signed the November 17 letter, says that's not surprising. "CBO is there to score savings for which we have a high degree of confidence that they will materialize," says Reischauer, now president of the Urban Institute. "There are many promising approaches [in these reform ideas] but you...can't deposit them in the bank." In the long run, Reischauer says, it's likely "that maybe half of them, or a third of them, will prove to be successful. But that would be very important."

While generally supportive of Reid's approach, McClellan, the former Medicare administrator under Bush, offered several specific ideas for strengthening it. He says the Senate should improve the capacity of HHS to more quickly evaluate whether the payment reforms are working, and also to provide data and technical assistance to new physician groups like the accountable care organizations that will be attempting to better coordinate care. "Ideally you'd both be able to tell the organizations involved and Congress what is working or not, and give the organizations the feedback and data they need to know whether they are doing a good job," he says. McClellan also believes that the plan needs sharper sticks-tougher penalties on providers who don't provide efficient and effective care. "There are a lot of carrots and not so many sticks," he maintains. Of course, tougher penalties might provoke more opposition from provider groups like hospitals and physicians now tenuously supporting the legislation.
[[McClellan stands at the forefront of centrist Republican thinking on health. Even the more ideologically conservative health care thinkers to his right generally don't oppose long-term reform ideas like bundling payments (John McCain promoted that during his presidential campaign). But they tend to view them as insufficient or tangential to the real problem. Their view highlights a fundamental difference between the parties' on health care. To save costs, Democrats mostly want to change the incentives for providers. Republicans mostly want to change the incentives for patients by shifting toward a model where insurance covers only catastrophic expenses and people pay for more routine care from tax-favored health savings accounts. In essence, the Republican view is that the best way to hold down long-term costs is to directly expose patients to more of them. Few Democrats accept that logic though and it has little influence on either chamber's legislation.

Another Republican cost-containment priority missing from the bill is meaningful medical malpractice reform. (The bill only encourages states to think about it.) Nichols, of the centrist New America Foundation, would like to see that included as well. Its omission is one reason he says he gives the plan a "b" rather than an "a"; the other is he'd like to see mechanisms to more quickly diffuse into the private insurance system reforms that show promise in Medicare. Democratic sources say a group of centrist Democrats led by Virginia Senator Mark Warner is trying to devise a package designed to do just that, perhaps by expanding the role of the independent Medicare advisory commission.

The attempt in all these ideas to nudge the medical system away from fee-for-service medicine toward an approach that ties compensation more closely to results captures how much the health care debate has shifted toward cost-control. So far, the rise in health care spending has proven almost invulnerable to every previous attempt to tame it, like the managed care revolution in the 1990s. Even if Obama signs into law a final bill embodying all these reform proposals, many skeptics wonder if they can bend, much less break, the seemingly inexorable increase in health care spending. Reischauer understands that skepticism, but isn't able to entirely suppress a kernel of optimism that this latest reform agenda may prove more effective than its predecessors. "One never knows whether we're turning the corner or if this is just playing the same old game for another inning," he says. "But I sense there's something different out there. I think the medical profession and its leaders have read the handwriting on the wall and are trying to evolve." If so, the ideas the Senate will begin voting on tonight could mark a milestone in that journey.
]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/obama_and_the_atlantic.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/obama_and_the_atlantic.php Featured Promo Tue,24 Nov 2009 16:52:06 GMT Americans Oppose War, Want More Troops a new CNN poll suggests: Americans narrowly support sending 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan--a figure that's shy of Gen. Stanly McChrystal's request for 40,000--by a margin of 50 percent to 49 percent, but they oppose the war 52 percent to 45.

Americans had shown interest in sending more troops as of about a month ago, but that has tapered off of late--so CNN's poll, if anything, shows a rebound of support for more troops.
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Today's CNN numbers are surprising not because they show Americans essentially split on sending more troops, but because they're split on such a large number: the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll was the only major survey to put a specific number on the troop increase, and it showed Americans supporting of a surge of 10,000 but opposed 49-43 to McChrystal's requested 40,000.

The seeming contradiction isn't that surprising, either. Polls have, at multiple times, shown that Americans don't want Obama to send more troops, but they do want him to follow the advice of his generals--which, so far, has been to send more troops.

So, unless something major changes between now and next Tuesday, Obama will announce his Afghanistan decision to a public that has complex and mixed feelings about the war.]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/americans_oppose_war_want_more_troops.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/americans_oppose_war_want_more_troops.php Promo Tue,24 Nov 2009 15:33:15 GMT The New Deadline said he'd sign a health care bill by the State of the Union, and Democrats appear to be on board: Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) told MSNBC that getting a bill to the president by that deadline is "absolutely our commitment." First August, then the end of the year, and now the State of the Union. Neither the House nor Senate has dates set in stone for when lawmakers will head home for the holidays and return to DC to resume work on a bill, and, if the House's Saturday vote was any indication, it looks like they'll be working overtime to get health care done--which is just what Brown promised: "We're going to be working weekends, we're going to be working into the night," he said.
]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/the_new_deadline.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/the_new_deadline.php Promo Tue,24 Nov 2009 15:04:51 GMT Will Obama Use PowerPoint And Other Afghan Questions
1. Why We went to Afghanistan in the first place. A useful reminder of 9/11, the Taliban and their guests, Al Qaeda.

2. What's working and what's not.

3. The Karzai government. You have to walk a fine line between calling it a democratic government and saying they need to do more.

4. Make it clear that we're not staying forever but we're staying long enough to finish the job. See Bush in Iraq, circa 2005.

5. Explain how we'll pay for it.

6. Explain what the plan is and how it's not just military but also involves building up Afghan institutions, training Afghan army, etc.

7. Salute the troops and their sacrifice.

8. Invoke the allies. Make it clear we're not alone.

9. Make it clear that the whole region depends on this too, including Pakistan.

10. Don't promise Afghanistan will be a perfect democracy, only that it'll be relatively stable and won't be an Al Qaeda base.

11. Don't promise the Taliban will be vanquished because they may end up in the government before it's all over.

In an age of PowerPoint and YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, the Oval Office address is still one of the great presidential tools--a chance for a directness and clarity without fanfare. It's a drama without a soundtrack. You get maximum TV impact and because it's short all the networks take it without fussing.
]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/will_obama_use_powerpoint_and_other_afghan_questions.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/will_obama_use_powerpoint_and_other_afghan_questions.php Breaking Analysis Featured Promo Tue,24 Nov 2009 13:24:07 GMT Question Of The Day: Should Obama Go To Copenhagen? The U.S. will propose an emissions reduction target at the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen in December. Should President Obama go there to make his case in person? http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/question_of_the_day_should_obama_go_to_copenhagen.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/question_of_the_day_should_obama_go_to_copenhagen.php Tue,24 Nov 2009 11:30:21 GMT The Rundown, 11/24
The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, will be in town for some quality time with the president and other top figures of the U.S. government. President Obama and Singh will hold a joint press conference at 11:35 a.m. Eastern with Hillary Clinton in attendance, VP Joe Biden will host a luncheon for Singh at the State Department, and the Obamas will host a state dinner at the White House tonight.
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Let the oil bidding begin...almost: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will announce the 2010 schedule for onshore oil and gas leasing of U.S. public lands on a conference call with reporters at noon.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will hold a press conference with her Canadian counterpart, following their second meeting, to talk about shared security threats.

And, not that it has anything to do with politics, but the Consumer Product Safety Commission will reportedly announce one of the largest recalls of cribs in U.S. history.
]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/the_rundown_1124.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/the_rundown_1124.php Tue,24 Nov 2009 11:00:22 GMT The Invisible Primary, 11/24 Tracking the GOP race to 2012

Rick Santorum will head to South Carolina next month for two days to campaign for GOP gubernatorial candidate Rep. Gresham Barrett; Lou Dobbs isn't ruling out a 2012 run; Mike Huckabee has the highest favorability rating among Iowa Republicans of any 2012 contender, according to a Des Moines Register poll; Mitt Romney has a sub-50 favorability rating among Republicans nationwide, according to Public Policy Polling; Martha Stewart called Palin a "dangerous person"; and Bobby Jindal and his wife will dine with the Obamas tonight at a state dunner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the White House.
]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/the_invisible_primary_1124.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/the_invisible_primary_1124.php Tue,24 Nov 2009 10:30:10 GMT Hurtling Toward 2010, 11/24 The 2010 midterms are just around the corner (sort of). Here's what's happening:

Rep. Dennis Moore (D-KS) will retire at the end of 2010, giving Republicans an opportunity to pick up his long-targeted district; Politico notes that Democrats are gearing up for ugly Senate primaries in Pennsylvania and Kentucky; Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who is running for President Obama's old Illinois Senate seat, toned down his rhetoric on Attorney General Eric Holder's 9/11 suspects decision; Jon Runyan (R), the former Philadelphia Eagles OT who may challenge Rep. John Adler (D-NJ), missed voting in four of nine general elections between 2000 and 2008; CQ says the conservative Pat Toomey is running to the center; and Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Schieffer is ending his bid.
]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/hurtling_toward_2010_1124.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/hurtling_toward_2010_1124.php Tue,24 Nov 2009 10:00:41 GMT Obama Has Info, Will Make Afghan Decision Shortly
"After completing a rigorous final meeting, President Obama has the information he wants and needs to make his decision and he will announce that decision within days," Gibbs said.

National Public Radio reported that the president intends to announce his decision next Tuesday, but a White House official said that no plans had yet been made. A speech was likely, as is the testimony of senior defense officials.
]]>In recent days, though, Obama aides have given reporters a peak at the president's thinking. They said they expect the commander in chief to approve north of 20,000 additional troops, but that he would probably not ask for all 40,000 requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the Afghanistan theater commander, pending the decision of other NATO countries to send more troops of their own.

The strategy announcement will be replete with references to various off-ramps and benchmarks, and the commanders will be responsible for regularly certifying compliance with them. If the benchmarks, such as they are, are not met, Obama may well draw down American troops. He has been advised privately by former Gen. Colin Powell to design and implement an exit strategy.

For weeks, his commanders have had a rough sense of where his mind was, although Obama has continuously pushed them to scale down their ambitions. It's probably safe to say that, at the beginning of the press, convincing the president to send any more troops to the region was a tough sell; he is closer today to his war commanders' points of view than where he was. But his own national security team, led by Gen. James Jones, feels it has succeeded in convincing the commanders that time is not on their side, that the troop increase is, in essence, the last hard power maneuver in the U.S. playbook, and that external factors beyond the performance of U.S. troops would dictate the future. The commanders, in other words, do not have a free hand: they must utilize the troops to achieve the goals laid out by political leaders in Washington.

Obama faces extreme pressure from Democrats in Congress to impose conditions on the troop increases, and he is likely to at least partially satisfy those Democrats. Unclear, at this point, whether his political base supports his decision because of the lengthy process he undertook to make it, or whether their skepticism about an unending, undefined conflict in the region pushes them to push congressional Democrats to stave off Obama's request for additional troop funding.

Americans are skeptical of the wisdom of fighting in Afghanistan. And the challenge for the White House now is to persuade them that the president is fully behind whatever strategy he is chosen. His aides believe that a half-hearted political communication campaign will place significant constraints on the mission itself.
]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/obama_has_info_will_make_afghan_decision_shortly.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/obama_has_info_will_make_afghan_decision_shortly.php National Security Obama Promo Tue,24 Nov 2009 04:34:49 GMT "Political Correctness Killed Americans" delivered on air Saturday and now posted in text on the Fox News website:

It appears that there was a prevailing spirit of political correctness that caused many from calling attention to his radical and anti-American statements. It's bad enough that political correctness has killed Christmas, comedy and common sense, but in this case, it appear that it killed 14 innocent people;13 soldiers and civilians and one unborn child...

]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/political_correctness_killed_americans.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/political_correctness_killed_americans.php Promo Mon,23 Nov 2009 21:08:17 GMT When Do We Get Serious About the Debt? reports that in 10 years, the government will have to pay $700 billion in interest on the debt, up from $200 billion this year. But the recession puts policy makers in a precarious spot. Like a guy with his feet on two ice sheets floating in opposite directions, the White House wants two things: (1) to keep up aggressive deficit spending to fill the gaps in private demand and (2) to keep its eye on a long term deficit reduction plan than it considers politically feasible.

Evan Bayh wants to get Idea #2 rolling, so he's floated the idea of a Budget Commission: a binding, bipartisan resolution that would (in his words) "force members of Congress to take -- or reject -- a single gulp of politically difficult medicine to treat the fiscal problems that are ailing our country." Matt Yglesias isn't impressed.
]]> base closing resolution, succeed when politicians are in broad agreement but need the commission to hammer out the ugly, and potentially unpopular, details so they can save face on otherwise embarrassing slights to their constituents. But I also think today's news offers a glimpse at how debt reduction could shift from fringey, wonky discussion of interest rates into a mainstream war over money.

The public is (I think prematurely) fretting about our 2009 deficit. But in the long-term, their concern is perfectly rational. Due to the government's crush on short-term Treasury bills, more than $1.6 trillion is owed on those bonds by April. What's more, interest rates will climb when the US demonstrates sustainable growth, at which point the Federal Reserve must start selling off its assets to shrink the money supply and avoid rapid inflation.

2010 will be a year about jobs, but it will also be a year of intense speculation about the Fed's interest rate. Nobody knows how long unemployment will stick around the 10 percent mark, and nobody quite knows how the bond market is going to react to a sustained economic recovery. All we know now is what we owe now, and we already can't afford the government we're fielding on the taxes we're paying.]]> http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/when_do_we_get_serious_about_the_debt.php http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/when_do_we_get_serious_about_the_debt.php Mon,23 Nov 2009 20:47:09 GMT