Month: August 2009

by Patrick Appel

Matt Welch counters Joe Klein:

[If] as the growing media narrative contends, the Republicans have devolved into a rump party of half-sane white southerners wracked by racial anxiety, why does it keep rewarding anti-racist anti-populists at the top of its presidential ticket (including, notably, the ticket that ran against a liberal Democrat black candidate), while rejecting every dime-store Tancredo with prejudice? When does this allegedly mainstream Republican pathology begin showing up in the numbers, or in the personages of those who lead the party?

by Chris Bodenner

Krugman unloads on Obama. Ta-Nehisi isn't surprised by his betrayal of core progressive causes, but adds:

[I]t really hit me yesterday when Obama claimed that health care reform "shouldn't be a political issue." Really? Then why did he hand it off to a gaggle of politicians? Why is he even talking about it? Then Obama shouted out Chuck Grassley, who has aided the spread of death panel rumors, as an example of a Republican whose been "working very constructively." Grassley returned the favor by calling Obama "intellectually dishonest." […] I'm not sure that most voters are bothered by any of this. Still, this whole escapade smacks of Obama being too clever by half–of an Obama who can't get over his own high-mindedness and holds out the bipartisan spirit as a kind of fetish, a gimmick. It's all so unserious.

by Conor Clarke

Couldn't have said this better myself:

Let's see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling. […] We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no "death panels" in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

Charles, allow me to get the locks and the barricade. Whew. But now that Palin's gone, let's consider the rest of your argument:

To offer government reimbursement to any doctor who gives end-of-life counseling — whether or not the patient asked for it — is to create an incentive for such a chat. […] What do you think such a chat would be like? Do you think the doctor will go on and on about the fantastic new million-dollar high-tech gizmo that can prolong the patient's otherwise hopeless condition for another six months? Or do you think he's going to talk about — as the bill specifically spells out — hospice care and palliative care and other ways of letting go of life?

Krauthammer picks the latter. But this argument is curiously self-defeating. If you share Krauthammer's premise that doctors will offer end-of-life counseling because they have a financial incentive to do so, surely this premise will lead you to the conclusion that the doctor will offer "the fantastic new million-dollar high-tech gizmo" instead of a cheaper one. (I should make clear that I don't share Krauthammer's premise — and of course I don't share his assumption that such a counseling session is a bad thing. My consistent concern is the sinister protrayal of these sessions as "mandatory" and offering services akin to euthanasia.)

As a side note, I should add that the relevant section of the House bill discusses many options beyond "hospice care and palliative care," so that's a bit of a fudge on Krauthammer's part. I should also add that I have no idea what Krauthammer means when he writes that doctors will be reimbursed for a service rendered "whether or not the patient asked for it." And I am further intrigued by Krauthammer's claim that his living will is "more a literary than a legal document." I've filled out some impressively boring legal documents, but they don't exactly hold a candle to Dickens.

by Peter Suderman

In the New York Times this morning, Paul Krugman writes that "progressives are now in revolt," and that Obama has lost their trust. 

[T]here’s a growing sense among progressives that they have, as my colleague Frank Rich suggests, been punked. And that’s why the mixed signals on the public option created such an uproar.

Now, politics is the art of the possible. Mr. Obama was never going to get everything his supporters wanted.

But there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke. 

Where to start? First of all, it looks to me like Obama has started to call out Republicans for playing politics with health-care reform. I completely agree with the charge: Republicans are most certainly attempting to play this debate for maximum political gain. But so is Obama. That's the name of the game in Washington, and no president, no matter how popular or capable or influential, is going to change that. 

And pinning health-care reform's troubles entirely on Republicans seems like a stretch, at best. Sure, GOP obstructionism is whipping up fervor amongst the base,and that's helped spark the media frenzy. But moderate Democrats have been a big obstacle too. Conservative Republicans were never going to go along with Obama's plan; the more telling problem, I think, is that the administration has failed to court some members of its own party. 

Meanwhile, I wonder: What did progressives expect?

That Obama could simply roll into Washington and ignore the myriad forces arrayed against a liberal agenda? That conservatives, Republicans, moderate Democrats, and interested industry groups would simply go away or shut up? That Obama, through force of will and liberal coolness, could use his awesome rhetorical ju-jujitsu skills to flip the opposition and defeat nutty right-wingers and conservative politicians forever? 

Unless you're a character in an Aaron Sorkin show, that's just not how national politics work. And it's particularly unrealistic given that Obama didn't run as a progressive cage-fighter, but as a calm, pragmatic leader — with progressive sympathies, yes, but nothing like the ferocity of the netroots. 

Like Kevin Drum said: "Washington is a tough place to get anything done" no matter what side you're on. And if you go in expecting the world — or even incremental but sure-to-be-difficult change — you're bound to be disappointed. 

by Chris Bodenner

On napkins.

by Chris Bodenner

Ackerman points out one of the more compelling details from the Standish town hall:

It looks like [moderator and local businessman Dave] Munson has had someone whispering in his ear, according to The Washington Post, and that’s Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.). Munson found the economic arguments for moving the detainees to Standish compelling, until…

“He told me things that really scared the heck out of me,” Munson said. “He told me about soft targets and safe zones, that if they came to this country they would have rights, visitors and friends would come who could be jihadists.”

Those are some lurid and rather unlikely scenarios. […] It’s prudent to plan for the worst, but it’s fear-mongering to imply that Standish would become a Ground Zero waiting to happen.

In fact, when the prison closure was announced two months ago, Munson traveled all the way to DC to lobby for Guantanamo inmates. But Munson was the one who was lobbied successfully; Hoekstra over cocktails convinced him to take a 180-degree stance. And according to a local report, Hoekstra wasn’t even among the seven Michigan politicians Munson was scheduled to meet on the trip. Who knows what was said exactly, or if there was any sort of political bartering going on. (Munson is also VP of the Michigan Licensed Beverage Association, which is trying to kill a proposed smoking ban.)  But I doubt it. I spoke with Munson yesterday, and he seems like a well-meaning guy who was swayed by Hoekstra’s stature on the House intelligence committee. Or simply his scary rhetoric.

by Conor Clarke

Paul Krugman's column this morning is a great read — a strong case for the public option on both substantive and tactical grounds. But as someone who has been getting a fair number of vitriolic emails for arguing that a public option is not a necessary part of health-care reform [update: there's no need to hold the vitriol, and the address again is conorjclarke (at) gmail (dot) com], I want to point out that Krugman adds the following caveat to his argument:

That said, it’s possible to have universal coverage without a public option — several European nations do it — and some who want a public option might be willing to forgo it if they had confidence in the overall health care strategy. Unfortunately, the president’s behavior in office has undermined that confidence.

This is the crucial difference between the let-it-go-already and the hold-on-for-dear-life positions with respect to the public option: I don't think the president's behavior should undermine the confidence of health-care reformers. (Indeed, I think he's been pretty consistent: The public option is important but not essential.) What Congress has done to my confidence, on the other hand…

by Chris Bodenner

Copyranter reviews a new PSA out of Canada:

Yet another pass at the "you're sleeping with all his/her past partners" visual dramatization to warn against the HIV dangers of casual sex. Previously, pubic hair names (nsfw), condom-asphyxiated chihuahuas, and chewing gum have been employed as metaphors. Now, disarming octopussian Photoshop. … [F]airly effective art direction for getting the message across, though these trippily illustrated French ads are still the coolest AIDS prevention executions ever.

by Patrick Appel

Fallows parses the interview:

I have been far too soft on Betsy McCaughey. Even when conferring on her the title of "most destructive effect on public discourse by a single person" for the 1990s. She is way less responsible and tethered to the world of "normal" facts and discourse than I had imagined.

by Conor Clarke

The non-partisan Urban/Brookings Tax Policy Center is my favorite think tank, so it's quite distressing to see my friend Brad DeLong argue that the TPC should "pick a party, support it, and work hard to make its policies the best policies possible," rather than support "bipartisan" legislation. But much to my relief I I see that Howard Gleckman of the TPC has written a nice response:

I think Brad’s biggest error is his belief that we are bipartisan. We are not. We are proudly non-partisan. This is not the same thing. […] Our reputation for nonpartisanship is critical to what we do. It is why people across the political spectrum acknowledge our estimates are credible even as they sometimes grumble about what the results imply for their own policy views. If we lose that credibility by turning ourselves into DeLongian partisans, the data lose much of their value.

I think that's exactly right.

It might be the case that some people on the right dismiss TPC as a liberal think tank and some people on the left dismiss it as a conservative one. It might even be the case that the notion of "non-partisanship" is philosophically troubled: self proclaimed "non-partisans" do not have privileged access to the truth, and no "partisans" think of themselves as having insufficient fealty to the facts.

Non-partisanship might be becoming terribly passé. But it is nonetheless true that meaningful public discourse depends on a shared set of factual premises. And to the extent it is possible, I am grateful that organizations like TPC produce estimates that will be taken seriously by many people on both sides of the aisle and give us a little piece of geography to start the bickering.