The Dish

Clive Crook responds:

In appraising Obama's first year, one should certainly take note of his poisoned inheritance. If I haven't always done so, it might be because I think the point so obvious that repeating it gets tiresome.

This is not what he wrote in his original post. There he said specifically that mentioning the inheritance, as James Carville proposed, was pointless because "who cares? Carville is wrong. What does it matter who caused the problem? Obama's job is to solve it." But when the vast majority of Obama's debt problem – which the GOP is now merrily blaming entirely on him – is Bush's and the Republicans', it strikes me as vital for Obama to do just as Reagan did in his first SOTU:

Our current problems are not the product of the recovery program that’s only just now getting under way, as some would have you believe; they are the inheritance of decades of tax and tax, and spend and spend. […] The only alternative being offered to this economic program is a return to the policies that gave us a trillion-dollar debt, runaway inflation, runaway interest rates and unemployment.

Would Clive have excoriated Reagan for this passage – as he confronted similar deceptions and opportunism from his opposition at the time. Moreover, contrary to Clive's assertion, it is emphatically not Obama's job alone to solve the fiscal crisis.

The executive has no power to spend or tax. The legislature has. I agree entirely with Clive's fundamental point that we need to raise taxes and cut entitlements and have been banging on about this for years. But again, Obama endorsed a congressional commission that would have mandated an up or down vote on long-term fiscal sanity before the SOTU, decried its failure in the SOTU, and pledged a presidential commission instead. Clive just dismisses the very solution he favors with this:

He said this must not be a way to kick the issue down the road. That is what it would be, of course.

Of course. So in effect, Clive is accusing the president of bad faith. And by ignoring the role of the total obstructionism of the Republicans – their unanimous refusal, for example, to reinstate pay-as-you-go rules in budgeting – Clive indeed does rig the debate so that Obama comes out poorly whatever he does. And indeed every obvious statement of bipartisanship that the president made – against the rank partisanship of his opponents – is simply dismissed by Clive as something that "came over" as disingenuous.

So if Obama says he wants reform, he's insincere. And if he doesn't, he isn't offering a "solution". You can see why the president cannot win. And how Clive's post sets him up for precisely that.

Douthat prays:

My great hope is that the Right will learn a lesson from the current liberal agony, and figure out its own way, if and when conservatives return to power, to “create some big things out smaller, salable pieces.” My great fear is that Republicans will continue to oscillate, as they are at the moment, between ideas that are simply too small-bore to matter all that much and grand visions that are too sweeping to be implemented.

As readers know, I was fine with Focus On The Family running a pro-life ad in the Superbowl. But as another reader noted, it was a departure from tradition. In the past, issues ads were deemed non-kosher – but if it's a Christianist and virulently anti-gay organization behind the ad, it appears to be ok. But if it's a humorous commercial ad for a gay dating service, CBS says no. Here's the boilerplate:

"After reviewing the ad, which is entirely commercial in nature, our standards and practices department decided not to accept this particular spot," said CBS spokeswoman Shannon Jacobs.

The ad both blows away stereotypes about gay men, and has a comic touch at the end with a fellow football fan looking somewhat amazed at the make-out scene (which is basically obscured by the men's bodies).

There is one reason this ad was denied. Its gay content was deemed offensive to football fans, while an anti-abortion issues ad wasn't. That's called blatant discrimination and if it doesn't lead to aggressive protests I'll be very surprised.

The full transcript here. Full video here. Drum:

It's remarkable that Republicans agreed to this. The guy at the mike always has an advantage in these kinds of forums, and in any case Obama is better than most at this kind of thing. For the most part, he's running rings around them.

Yglesias:

Barack Obama is a lot smarter and better-informed than his antagonists. A lot. He very calmly and coolly dismantled them.

To me, personally, it’s not a surprise. I debated policy with Mike Pence once and the guy is a stone-cold idiot. That was a years ago and I’ve been surprised since then to learn that conservatives consider him an unusually sharp policy mind and I take leading rightwingers at their word about that. But it’s the kind of thing that I think most Americans aren’t aware of.

NRO's Daniel Foster:

It would be hard to argue the exchange is anything but a plus-plus for Obama and the GOP. Both sides emerged from it looking as if, contra the public's greatest fears, they more or less know what they are talking about on issues like the deficit and health-care reform.

Ezra Klein:

Yesterday, I interviewed David Axelrod and was struck by his inability to explain how the White House would highlight the the difference between disagreement and obstruction. Today's session, if it becomes a regular event rather than a one-off, provided part of the answer. He'll debate them directly. But that may be tough to do. Republicans are already spreading the word that they made a mistake allowing cameras into the event. Apparently, transparency sounds better in press releases than it does in practice.

Mary Katharine Ham:

[D]espite the scrambling to declare that Obama "won" this event, it's not a net loss for Mike Pence and Paul Ryan to take on the president on the facts of health care and entitlements, in person…The president's confession that he "read your bills," may be the first time many Americans are informed that the GOP has health-care bills of any kind, and that they are substantial enough to warrant the attention of the president.

Mike Madden:

The whole thing basically went like [this]: Republican asks obnoxious question rooted in Glenn Beck-ian talking points; Obama swats it away, makes the questioner look silly, and then smiles at the end. It got so bad, in fact, that Fox News cut away from the event before it was over. Democratic operatives around Washington watching it had pretty much the same reaction: "Where the hell has this guy been?" One source said GOP aides probably wished they'd spoken to John McCain "about what happened to him in the presidential debates" before they broadcast the event. "It's quite a show," a White House official said, apparently going for the same deadpan tone the president was.

Have a look at the roll call vote on the amendment to restore pay-as-you-go legislation in the Senate. The GOP is as interested in restraining spending as I am in wanting to have sex with women. But at least I'm not in the closet.

A reader writes:

I have a few problems with the idea of the Tebow ad (I can't say I have a problem with the ad itself, as it has not aired yet).

1. It seems interesting/questionable that CBS has reconsidered their policy on "issue" ads to air a  conservative "pro-life" ad after rejecting so many liberal issue ads (PETA, Move On, the United Church of Christ). Maybe this is a result of economic pressures, maybe not. CBS can say any other group is welcome to submit a "responsibly produced" ad, but at this late date few organizations can probably put together the funds. No one saw this coming because of CBS's prior consistent stance against issue ads. If CBS had made it clear that their policy had changed and gave organizations equal crack at it, I would have less of a problem.

2. Super Bowl ads are traditionally fun and ridiculous.

Some people watch just for the ads. I can only imagine that this ad will not be in the spirit of most Super Bowl ads. Yes, Tebow is a football player, but the ad just doesn't seem to fit with the programming.

3. It's a little disingenuous for the makers of this ad to say that it isn't a political ad, as they did on NPR this week. It's also disingenuous to pretend that this is just a feel good story. This ad is funded and produced by Focus on the Family. They have a political agenda.

4. It frustrates me how this ad will likely overly simplify a very complex matter. If a woman is told that she may or will die if she continues with the pregnancy, it must be an anguishing decision. Also, I would hate to see women misinformed by an ad like this. Not every woman in Mrs. Tebow's situation will have the same results. Her choice was risky – she could have died and/or her baby could have died. And I am sorry, but I believe that a mother has as much of a right to live as her unborn baby – there are two lives hanging in the balance in this situation. I am truly glad it worked out for them.

But I can't help but think that a Super Bowl ad will not address the complexities of a decision like this. It's almost insulting to me that such a deeply personal and potentially tragic situation is the subject of a Super Bowl ad. And i can't help but be annoyed by the idea of a college kid indirectly telling me that he knows more about my health and my life than me or my doctor because his story had a happy ending. There are many forums to have honest and meaningful dialogue about this issue. Your series on late term abortions last year was amazing – it actually allowed people to discuss the wide range of issues. This ad is not a discussion – it's a lecture – it's one way communication. All an ad like this does is make people like me mad and people like Sarah Palin happy – it doesn't make any progress for either side.

John Carney is unimpressed by the iPad:

The iPad will not rearrange my life the way the iPhone did.

The easiest way to explain this is to run through how the iPhone changed my life. It made a ton of stuff I used to carry around completely unnecessary. It replaced the following devices:

• my old cell phone;
• my blackberry;
• my Flip video recorder;
• my digital camera; and
• my iPod.

Here's a list of what the iPad replaces:

That's right: nothing.

Bainbridge counters. I think I need to get my hands on one to know for sure. Clive Crook agrees with the Dish on this one.

(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty).

Manzi does a close reading of the SOTU

There are only two possibilities: either he is basically right that that lack of fidelity to the public good by the political class is why he can’t get his policy proposals implemented into law, or he is not. If he is right, then asking everybody to play nice won’t, by definition, fix the problem. Proposing procedural reforms to lobbying and so forth (as the president did) won’t fix it, because such a political class would simply make sure that such reforms were Potemkin affairs that did nothing to address the root problem. If he is trying to go over the heads of Congress, and shame them in front of the American people, he has not come close to the depth, intensity and repetition of the criticisms he would need to make such a strategy work. But if is he is not right, then he has misidentified the problem. Either way he is stuck without a proposed course of action – which is where, at least in this speech, I think he found himself.

I think he's right about the political class and I agree it makes things very very hard. All he has done so far in this respect is to remind voters that he gets their frustration with the Beltway mentality. Today's Baltimore effort was more in that vein. It was civil but real contact sport on the key issues and the central fact of GOP obstructionism.

Fallows provides his annual annotation of the speech.

A reader writes:

You neglect female masturbation. Women and girls do it, too, and there’s no sperm production — or any other physical reason — to compel it. Moreover, according to your correspondent’s views on Christian doctrine, there really shouldn’t be any reason for the clitoris. It’s strictly for pleasure, the sin organ. See the equatorial belt of Africa for where this kind of logic leads us.

Ah, yes: clitoris, purpose of, p 86. My favorite index entry in The Conservative Soul, where this question is directly addressed. You can download it onto your Kindle for $9.59.