Month: October 2010

And the beat goes on.

As governor he solved an overcrowding crisis in California's state prison system:

Reagan actually bragged about releasing people from prison and shrinking the prison budget, which is hard to imagine nowadays. And this was just a different time politically. There wasn't a lot of attention on crime policy. You didn't have state ballot initiatives devoted to prison and crime issues. You didn't have a public that thought it was equipped and capable of making criminal justice policy. You didn't have a strong prison guards' union that lobbied the Legislature and the governor. And at the time, the governor just had more control over the prison system overall.

All told he reduced the incarceration rate by 34 percent! Imagine what a Republican primary candidate would do with that record today.

Another positive gesture from the Israelis.

Ambinder reports on an internal revolt against the president's endless DADT maneuvering. My view on the latest here.

Obama has the biggest lead over his Congress in recent history (except for the first Bush whose approval ratings are distorted by the Gulf War).

David Frum believes that “the case for conservative reform, however jeered at on Election Night, will emerge stronger and more urgent from the November vote”:

Between 2001 and 2007, Republicans gained something they had not had for any comparable length of time since the 1920s: the presidency, plus majorities in both houses of Congress. The results? Not so good. … Winning elections is great, but it’s not an end in and of itself. An election is only a means to an end: governing is the end, governing in ways that benefit the large preponderance of the people, not just a select few.

If you have some governing responsibility in an era of economic crisis (like a House majority), a refusal to offer any constructive policies will hurt you. My one simple hope if we get gridlock is that we can get a grand compromise on the long-term debt. We need some tax hikes, big entitlement cuts – more than the Medicare trims and bend-the-cost-curve hopes of health insurance reform – and defense cuts. Nothing else does the math. In an adult polity, this shoud be discussed, with both parties finding a way to come to the center – as Reagan did with Democrats on tax reform in 1986 and as Clinton did with welfare reform in 1996. It was win-win both times, for both parties and the country. It can and should happen again on the long-term debt.

Perhaps the way forward is a combination of tax reform/simplification and spending cuts/extension of the retirement age. My view is that the American middle will reward those capable of compromise on this. And my suspicion is that this gives the pragmatic president a core advantage over a more ideological opposition. But it also seems to me to represent an opening for a saner Republican, like Mitch Daniels or even a pragmatic version of Paul Ryan. If the Republicans refuse to raise any taxes, they’re unserious about the debt. If the Dems won’t tackle entitlements more than they have, ditto.

Chris Hayes visits an ominous dateline:

I had heard of Hebron, of course, but it was lodged vaguely in my mind as one of those foreign places where awful things happen. To see it in person is to understand viscerally that the status quo in the West Bank cannot hold. To see it is to understand just what occupation requires.

Learn what he saw here.

That’s the view of the Belgian Catholic primate, André-Joseph Léonard.

That is what the Obama Justice Department has said about an immediate repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” as ordered by a federal judge. For the record, from the court filing:

The immediate implementation of the injunction would disrupt this review and frustrate the Secretary’s ability to recommend and implement policies that would ensure that any repeal of DADT does not irreparably harm the government’s critical interests in military readiness, combat effectiveness, unit cohesion, morale, good order, discipline, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces.

What they’re saying is both that retaining the ban hurts “military readiness, combat effectiveness, unit cohesion, morale, good order, discipline, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces” and that precipitously ending the ban hurts “military readiness, combat effectiveness, unit cohesion, morale, good order, discipline, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces.” That’s the exquisite knot they have tied themselves into. And it might work, I suppose, if the orderly process was inevitable. But it seems pretty clear to me isn’t. The Senate has filibustered this once in a Democratic majority session. What are the odds that, using exactly these Obama arguments about “morale” and “unit cohesion”, the GOP will not filibuster again in a lame-duck session even if the military top brass give the go-ahead? I have little doubt there will be enough resistance in the report itself to give the GOP a reason to keep the ban alive. Here is the president last night on the question:

“We are moving in the direction of ending this policy,” he said. But, he added: “It has to be done in a way that is orderly, because we are involved in a war right now. But this is not a question of whether the policy will end. This policy will end, and it will end on my watch. But I do have an obligation to make sure that I’m following some of the rules. I can’t simply ignore laws that are out there. I’ve got to work to make sure that they are changed.”

What does “orderly” mean? No one is saying it should be chaotic. And if, as he says, the ban can only end by changing the law, and not by any executive stop-loss order, how can he also simply state that the ban “will end on my watch”? He does not control the Congress now, and even less next year. So he cannot mean by the end of his two terms, can he?  

Can he?

(PHOTO: Dan Choi by Kris Connor/Getty/AFP)