Author: Andrew Sullivan

Today on the Dish, Andrew responded to Glenn Greenwald on defending Awlaki's free speech. On Simpson-Bowles, Douthat defended its lukewarm reception on the right, but Andrew begged to differ. Andrew scoffed at the record of Republican presidents on debt, and Charlie Cook wrote the speech Obama should give endorsing it. Unemployment benefits soon to expire could expose the ultimate cynicism of the right, and Frum wanted to reform campaign finance law to empower moderates. DADT protestors were arrested at the White House, and Paul Suderman weighed the GOP advantages of a tweak versus a repeal of the healthcare reforms. A GOP freshman didn't understand Obamacare but still asked for it, and Limbaugh painted an unapologetically racist portrait of the president.

Bernstein discounted Palin and Romney, and the 2012 tea leaves kept coming. The old Palin was itching for glamour and culture, but the current one still can't fish. Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell's WaPo's article on a one-term Obama was demolished, and Andrew longed for a way to support Ezra Klein without the WaPo. Johann Hari mastered the art of handling Fox propaganda, and Rangel toppled on 11 of 13 charges.  Balko raged against cops who arrest those who videotape cops, Yglesias skewered universities and their presidents, and New York needed innovators. Andrew gave mad props to Clinton on owning the peace process, Steinglass asked why we keep throwing money at Afghanistan, and Bill Gates approved of China's energy advances. Cantor committed his own treason and called it patriotism, readers rebutted the practice of eating dogs, and Goldblog advised America to freeball it for the TSA.

We plumbed the record of DEA director nominee Michele Leonhart, and readers regaled us with more stories of the bathtub gin of cannabis, including an all-natural alternative. Sophistication didn't make for good dinner party guests, President Obama could order flowers over the phone more easily than Lady Gaga, and Timothy Lee praised Apple's design method. Men fake orgasms, and our vintage transsexual could just be breeching. Chart of the day here, MHB here, FOTD here, VFYW here, and VFYW contest winner #24 here.

–Z.P.

 

Douthat peers into the future:

The lure of unseating Obama in 2012 will almost certainly prove more appealing than the prospect of negotiating a complicated deal on deficit reduction with the White House. The only way this calculus might change is if Obama’s re-election starts to look more and more inevitable, and (as Mickey Kaus put it recently, drawing an analogy to the welfare reform deal of 1996) Republican legislators “realize that it’s in their individual interests, if they want to be reelected, to actually accomplish something, even if that means boosting Obama at the expense of whoever gets the G.O.P. presidential nomination.” But the more likely scenario for a bipartisan deal involves Obama winning re-election in 2012 while the Republicans hold the House of Representatives — in which case the knowledge that they’ll be stuck with one another for another four years might propel the parties toward a Simpson-Bowles-like bargain.

Gallup polls the likely nominees:

The current results on Republicans' presidential nomination preferences suggest the 2012 contest could be more wide open than any since the winners began to be determined largely through state primaries and caucuses in 1972. Since that time, there has typically been a clear Republican front-runner before the nominating campaign got underway, including Richard Nixon in 1972, Gerald Ford in 1976, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, George H.W. Bush in 1988 and 1992, Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and Rudy Giuliani in 2008. With the exception of Giuliani, the front-running candidate has prevailed.

Jonathan Bernstein recently made the same basic point.

Dave Roberts attended a workshop on behavior change. He found it sobering:

Many, many (many!) people cling to the notion that the way to motivate behavior change is simply to give people more information. Untold sums of money have been spent sending people brochures or sending them to websites where they can learn more; the results of those programs are almost uniformly dismal. Information is not motivation.

Others cling to a different illusion: that price alone can shift behavior, that financial self-interest is a kind of ur-motivation, trumping all others. Carbon pricing, according to the economist's dream, will drive cascading behavior change across the entire economy. In fact, as [Dr. Doug McKenzie-Mohr, a professor, consultant, and author of the book Fostering Sustainable Behavior] illustrated at length, programs driven by economic incentives (rebates, etc.) have underperformed again and again. As he told me later, he's a supporter of ecological tax reform, but we should be realistic …

A reader writes:

Haven't you seen The American President? As always, Aaron Sorkin got there first.

And second – another writes:

In one episode of "The West Wing", President Bartlet, who hasn't cooked in many years (obviously), has some questions about how to properly cook a turkey for Thanksgiving. He calls the Butterball hotline and trips over himself alternatively trying to say (and then hide) that he's the president. Here's the clip.

PPP does early polling in Virginia:

Obama leads Mitt Romney (48-43) and Mike Huckabee (49-44) each by 5 points in hypothetical contests, a margin similar to his victory over John McCain in the state. If the Republican nominee was either Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin Obama's lead widens to 11 points, by spreads of 52-41 and 51-40 respectively.

Politco's nationwide poll shows Obama losing to a generic Republican but beating the current GOP frontrunners.

Paul Armentano wishes the Senate would ask Michele Leonhart, Obama's nominee for director of the DEA, some tough questions:

* What are your plans for bridging the growing divide between state and federal law concerning the use of marijuana for medical purposes?

* How has the DEA changed its policies and practices to ensure compliance with the 2009 Department of Justice memo calling on federal law enforcement to no longer target individuals who are in compliance with the medical marijuana laws of their states?

* When will the DEA respond to a 2002 petition to hold hearings on the rescheduling of marijuana, as were called for by the American Medical Association?

 Mike Meno digs through her record.

Matt Yglesias skewers universities and their presidents:

The way a lot of industries are structured, the best way to get rich is to think up a way to produce whatever it is you’re producing cheaper. That way you can cut prices, increase sales volume and market share, all while increasing per unit profit margins. Not everything in the business world works like that, of course, but some of it does—especially the parts where you don’t see endlessly increasing prices.

Higher education in America just doesn’t work like that. The precise mechanisms through which you get to be one of the highest-paid university presidents are a bit opaque to me (and it’s worth keeping in mind that there’s more to compensation than salary), but they don’t have anything to do with the idea of offering a good value to students. So it’s natural that the key institutions don’t really focus on value.

Jim Horney puts the unemployment benefits debate in perspective:

[W]e have about 5 million people who would really suffer if those benefits expire or they’re not extended. … In recent decades, we have never let the extended benefits expire when unemployment was above 7.2 percent. Right now it’s at 9.6 percent, and yet we have people saying we should let these benefits expire. It’d be harmful both for the families that will not get the benefits and for the economy.