Month: February 2010

Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

Chait is still betting that the health care bill will pass:

I'm not making a guarantee or anything close. Among other things, my scenario presupposes an intense, engaged White House lobbying the House at the end of the process, and that level of engagement may not materialize. And multiple things could go wrong. Another negative political shock, not even as large as Massachusetts, would probably be fatal. Still, I wouldn't bet against a signing ceremony.

Me neither. I suspect, once again, that Obama is ahead of me.

System FAIL

Fallows has a must-read on the profound problems of the US constitutional system when the opposition party simply votes no on everything as a bloc. It's hard to come up with a better sense of the dynamic than this actual conversation that took place over the stimulus package:

"GOP member: 'I'd like this in the bill.'

"Dem member response: 'If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?'

"GOP member:  'You know I can't vote for the bill.'

"Dem member:  'Then why should we put it in the bill?'

Read the whole thing.

The Real Islam, Ctd

Larison counters me:

Religious people who are political quietists will remain that way as long as their religion is not perceived to be under threat. What Andrew misses here is that the people he calls Christianists were political quietists for decades until they began to find the political and cultural changes going on around them seemed to threaten them and their religion. That is, they were “indifferent” to politics because they believed that the government and other major institutions largely left them to their own devices and did not bother them, which made withdrawal from the world seem like the right course of action. One reason why a self-consciously liberalizing “Green theology” would be such a disaster for the Green movement, as I have said before, is that it would provoke fierce resistance from all of these quietists who have so far effectively remained neutral in the internal political contest in Iran. They are unlikely to rally to the side of the protesters in any event, but they could very easily angrily turn against them if they appeared to threaten traditional religion.

The key phrase here is "seemed to threaten them and their religion." In a country with a First Amendment and a strong commitment to religious freedom, I think this fear is not, at root, a religious impulse. It's a political one. It is an attempt to seize or recapture power, where Christianity is about the renunciation of all earthly power.

Christianity, after all, was founded on a culture of marginalization, persecution and martyrdom, not political mastery and imperium. Jesus saw true faith in those without power – the marginalized and despised and powerless. You could argue, in fact, that Constantine's adoption of Christianity as a state religion was an original sin from which Christianity has still not recovered.

The truth is: if your faith is strong, you are indifferent to worldy power and influence. You try to live your faith – which is hard enough – and leave the rest to God.

Jesus repeatedly, insistently refused the political option. Others may be changing the culture in different and disturbing ways; and a Christian will bear witness to this – but primarily by example, not through enforcement on others of a particular doctrine others may not share.

I understand how the Supreme Court's over-reach on Roe vs Wade – because it seemed to sanction what many Christians viewed as murder as a core part of the constitution – came to be such a catalytic event in the emergence of Christianism in the 1970s. In fact, I think liberals bear considerable responsibility for the creation of Christianism. But I remain firmly of the belief that the Christianist conflation of politics and religion, the insecurity of Christians in the faith of a secular, materialist and proud culture, and the pathological fear of modernity are not functions of faith.

They are functions of the lack of it.

The Executive Option On The Gay Ban

Aaron Belkin provides some interesting advance clues to what we may hear tomorrow from Gates and Mullen:

The Palm Center has announced that President Obama’s executive changes to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, expected to be announced Tuesday, could significantly impact the lives of gay troops. The expected statements from Defense Secretary Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen would protect some service members from investigations based on third-party allegations and set a new standard for what constitutes reliable sources and credible information that trigger a “don’t ask, don’t tell” investigation. It is also expected that the military brass will announce changes to the adjudication of potential discharges, whose effect could be to require a flag officer to sign off on any discharge for it to move forward.

“This ‘Obama Rule’ could provide a new standard for ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ investigations,” said Dr. Aaron Belkin, Director of the Palm Center. “Depending on how it’s implemented, the executive action taken by the President could be seismic. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ has rested on the belief that the presence of openly gay service members is always bad for the military. The new Obama Rule would mean a shift in the military’s focus toward keeping gay troops, reflecting the military’s belief that they are as essential as their heterosexual peers.”

Belkin also said the effectiveness of the changes would depend on what message was sent by top civilian and uniformed leaders to the officers responsible for approving discharges. “If new discretion is being granted to two-stars, then the actual impact of the Obama rule will hinge on whether the President, the Defense Secretary, and the Service Chiefs send a clear signal that discharges are to be minimized,” Belkin said.

The key to this working is speedy and decisive implementation – and a stated goal to drastically reduce the number of discharges. As an interim step, it could lead to a military in which gay service-members are increasingly allowed to stay. The truth is, despite Christianist propaganda, the vast majority of gay soldiers are interested in doing their jobs and serving their country – not crusading for gay equality. They just want to be left alone. 

This should not, emphatically not, be a reason to avoid legislative action to end the discrimination. But if it works to hollow out the policy from within, to make expulsion of gay servicemembers rarer and rarer, to reiterate and reinforce the critical and valuable role gay soldiers play in the defense of their country, and if it is endorsed by the military brass – then it's a very interesting path for Obama to take.

Stay tuned.

Why Obama Is Constrained

Megan has a very insightful post on the limits of Obama really sticking it to the Republicans over their record. Bruce Bartlett and I are free to do so with gusto because we both attacked Bush for over-spending and borrowing from the get-go, and opposed the Medicare Prescription Drug budget-buster (but Obama didn't do any of the above). Yes, the Bush tax cuts are hard for Obama to bash because he has continued them, as Megan notes. But he has continued them only because ending them in the middle of a severe recession would have been nuts. But bashing tax cuts is not politically very potent at any time and would open Obama up to the usual tirades from the right.

Obama should be able to blame the Iraq war for a trillion or so (I can't; I supported it) but he's commander-in-chief now and cannot easily decry a war which he is now committed to conducting and ending. Hence his political predicament.

First Ornstein, Now Judis

Beneath all the hoopla and political gamesmanship, has Obama already begun a quiet revolution in government? I get an emerging sense of a revival of political support for Obama – not on the basis of the fickle spin and noise of the blogosphere but on that fuddy-duddy old criterion – governance.

(Ornstein's eye-opening piece about the current Congress's achievements here.)

Pawlenty’s Pabulum

T-Paw is regarded by some as a moderate, even thoughtful Republican, with some policy heft. So check out his op-ed in Politico this morning. It's about fiscal responsibility. His answer to our fiscal crisis: tax cuts! Yes, the way to cut debt is to reduce revenue. Does he propose ways to cut entitlement spending and defense? Of course not. He's a borrow-and-spend Republican! Take it away, Bruce Bartlett:

Like all Republicans these days, Pawlenty wants to have it every possible way: complain about the deficit while ignoring everything his party did to create it (Medicare Part D, two unfunded wars, TARP, earmarks galore, tax cuts up the wazoo, irresponsible regulatory and monetary policies that created the recession that created the deficit, etc.), illogically insisting that tax cuts are a necessary part of deficit reduction, and never proposing any specific spending cuts.

The only specific thing Mr. Pawlenty is capable of proposing is a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. It’s hard to know where to begin in explaining why this is such an irresponsible idea, but I will try.

Read the whole thing.