Home > Jay Bookman > Archives > 2008 > November
November 2008
…and sportswriters still dream of playing center field
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The human ego, left unchecked, can lead to many a foolhardy decision. Case in point:
“HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews may be considering a run for U.S. Senate in 2010, a Pennsylvania Democratic party leader says.
The Patriot-News of Harrisburg reported that Matthews met with state party leaders this past week in Washington to discuss a possible bid to unseat Republican Sen. Arlen Specter.
Party official Mary Isenhour said she left the meeting feeling that Matthews still hadn’t made up his mind.
The 62-year-old Matthews hosts MSNBC’s “Hardball” and provides political commentary on NBC’s “Today.” His contract with MSNBC expires in June.
Matthews, a Philadelphia native, ran unsuccessfully for a Pennsylvania congressional seat in 1974.”
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Health-care reform fiscal necessity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Talk to the chief executives of America’s preeminent health-care institutions, and you might be surprised by what you hear: When it comes to medical care, the United States isn’t getting its money’s worth. Not even close.
“We’re not getting what we pay for,” says Denis Cortese, president and chief executive of the Mayo Clinic. “It’s just that simple.”
“Our health-care system is fraught with waste,” says Gary Kaplan, chairman of Seattle’s cutting-edge Virginia Mason Medical Center. As much as half of the $2.3 trillion spent today does nothing to improve health, he says.
Not only is American health care inefficient and wasteful, says Kaiser Permanente chief executive George Halvorson, much of it is dangerous….
The United States today devotes 16 percent of its gross domestic product to medical care, more per capita than any other nation in the world. Yet numerous measures indicate the country lags in overall health: It ranks 29th in infant mortality, 48th in life expectancy and 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in preventable deaths.”
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The perverted logic of terror
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Once-improving relations between India and Pakistan have been seriously strained with the attacks in Mumbai, which is no doubt the very goal the terrorists sought to achieve.
In the Middle East, Palestinian terrorists and Israeli extremists use violence to keep moderates on both sides from reaching agreement. Every time peace seems it might be within reach, a spate of terror attacks is launched to subvert it.
On September 11, Osama bin Ladin was hoping to provoke precisely the kind of American overreaction that resulted in our invasion of Iraq, an attack that served to bolster his claim that the U.S. was anti-Islamic and imperialistic.
We claim over and over that we will not let the terrorists get their way. And over and over again we react precisely the way they had hoped and give them just what they wanted.
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Fresh thread (you supply the needles)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
… ‘cause I’m busy making homemade waffles and coffee and sausage for 20.
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High productivity=low reproductivity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Japan’s workers are being urged to switch off their laptops, go home early and use what little energy they have left on procreation, in the country’s latest attempt to avert demographic disaster.
The drive to persuade employers that their staff would be better off at home with their wives than staying late at the office comes amid warnings from health experts that many couples are simply too tired to have sex.
A recent survey of married couples under 50 found that more than a third had not had sex in the previous month.
Many couples said they didn’t have the energy for sex, while others said they found it boring.
A quarter of the men surveyed said they were “too tired” after work, while just under a fifth of women said intercourse was “too troublesome”. A study by Durex found that the average couple has sex 45 times a year, less than half the global average of 103 times.
Japan’s birth rate, at 1.34 - the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime - is among the lowest in the world and falls well short of the 2.07 children needed to keep the population stable.
If the rate persists, demographers warn that Japan’s overall population will drop to 95 million by 2050 from its 2006 peak of 127.7 million.
Earlier this month the crisis prompted Keidanren, Japan’s biggest business organisation, to implore its 1,600 member companies to allow married employees to spend more time at home.
Several firms have organised “family weeks” during which employees must get permission to work past 7pm, but most continue to squeeze every last drop of productivity from their staff.
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Taliban forms its own OPEC
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Taliban seem to have formed their own version of OPEC — in their case the Opium Producing and Exporting Cartel — complete with export limits designed to keep the price of their commodity high. The proceeds are used to fund Taliban operations against the U.S. and the Karzai government.
Says The New York Times:
UNITED NATIONS — Afghanistan has produced so much opium in recent years that the Taliban are cutting poppy cultivation and stockpiling raw opium in an effort to support prices and preserve a major source of financing for the insurgency, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations drug office, says….
Last year, the insurgents made as much as $300 million from the opium trade, by United Nations estimates. “With two to three hundred million dollars a lot of war effort can be funded,” said Mr. Costa, an Italian diplomat who has served at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for six years.
But after three years of bumper crops, including this one, the Taliban have succeeded almost too well, producing opium in amounts far in excess of world demand. The result, Mr. Costa said, was now a glut that was putting downward pressure on the price, which had dropped by about 20 percent.
The fact that prices had not collapsed already, he said, was evidence that the Taliban, drug lords and even some farmers have stockpiled the opium, more and more of which is also being processed in Afghanistan. “Insurgents have been holding significant amounts of opium,” Mr. Costa said.
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The nightmare in Mumbai continues
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, while we were feasting surrounded by friends and family, a group of well-trained, well-armed terrorists were wreaking havoc in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay.
The violence continues, with government forces still trying to hunt down and kill or capture terrorists. The death toll has topped 140, and will likely go higher. The English-language Indian press and blogs (here’s a site compiling blogs, including first-hand reports) are full of reports of horror, bravery, anger, threats — the reaction an echo of our own responses not that long ago to Sept. 11.
A lot of the anger is directed at a perceived lack of security in India, but the truth is that a dozen or more well-trained gunmen, acting in coordination, could wreak similar havoc in any major city in the world. The terrorists were reportedly dropped off in dinghies by a larger ship offshore, and it is all too easy to imagine similar attacks against Miami, New York, Los Angeles or other US ports.
Initial indications are that the attackers were Islamic extremists and may have trained in Pakistan, heightening India-Pakistan tensions as well as those between India’s Hindu and Muslim populations. In other words, the terrorists are succeeding in that goal as well.
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Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With the markets tanking, unemployment soaring, millions in danger of losing their homes and home values falling nationwide by almost 17 percent in just the last quarter, we’re supposed to take a day off to count our blessings?
Well, yes. In fact, Thanksgiving couldn’t have come at a better time. After months of increasing fear and an understandable focus on what many of us have lost or could lose in this crisis, today offers a chance to refocus on all that we still have, on all that is more precious to us. It is a chance to remind ourselves that the richness of life can’t be measured in terms of dollars or numbers on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
In strictly logical terms, it might seem harder to give thanks in tough times such as these, but that’s not how the human minds works. In fact, the opposite is often true: It is hard for most of us to be grateful in good times when everything is going well. We tend to get cocky, both as a nation and as individuals, and we take the good times for granted, assuming incorrectly that such a state of affairs is normal, that this is how it always ought to be and will be.
Conversely, it is human nature to appreciate your blessings most when those gifts seem more fragile and temporary. We suddenly live in an era when just having a steady paycheck and a roof over our heads might be more than cause enough to be thankful.
In fact, as extended circles of friends and family gather today, the odds are that somebody in the group — maybe several somebodies — will have lost their job, their businesss or their home, or have real fears that such a thing could happen in the not so distant future. The economic crisis is so widespread, touching so many industries and regions and economic classes, that no Thanksgiving gathering is likely to be immune to such fear.
But we’ve been through a lot worse before, as families if not as individuals, and we have things to draw on. A lot of folks, for example, still have Depression-era lore as part of their family history. It’s the wisdom of elders, passed down in narrative form by those who lived through hardships that we still have a difficult time imagining.
In my own family, the story that strikes deepest might be called the Night of the Oranges.
Back in the ’30s, my grandmother and grandfather were raising six kids in a West Virginia coal-mining town. That was tough enough, but it got worse when my grandfather, a machinist, was paralyzed by a stroke and bedridden for the rest of his life. Suddenly, my grandmother had seven mouths to feed and no breadwinner to help out.
When I’ve heard stories from that era, my aunts and uncles always seem to point out that other people had it worse than they did. But my Uncle Pat does tell the tale of a night somewhere around Christmas when a group of my grandfather’s co-workers showed up at the door bearing a holiday basket of canned food, candy and fresh oranges.
Uncle Pat recalls being transfixed at the sight of those oranges, which were apparently quite the luxury item in that time and place.
But my grandmother, a tough little wisp of a woman, bridled at what she saw as the offering of charity. She turned the men away and told them to take the basket with them, much to the dismay of the children standing behind her in the doorway.
(I should point out that Dad doesn’t remember the scene quite so cinematically, but hey, Pat always was the better storyteller.)
Those were tough people, people you could count on. At some point today, look at those around you; they are your certainty and security, and you are theirs.
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Major terror attack in Mumbai, India
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CNN reporting 78 dead, violence ongoing, perpetrated by multiple gunmen, hostages reportedly held.
UPDATE: Westerners apparently targeted. Here’s an English-language blog from Mumbai in real time.
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Obama governing style takes form
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In his morning press conference today, Barack Obama had a telling and important response to criticism that his appointees may not reflect the agenda of change championed in his campaign.
I don’t have his direct quote yet, but in general, Obama pointed out that “the change begins with me.” He made it clear that he intends to be the one who sets policy, and he is appointing competent people who can carry it out. It’s an assertion of authority and quite a change from the more hands-off style practiced by the current president.
UPDATE: Here’s the direct quote:
“”What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking. But understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me. That’s my job.”
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Obama gets a break in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Michael Yon, the conservatives’ favorite war blogger and a guy who deserves a lot of credit for his work in Iraq, has a piece in the New York Post headlined “Iraq’s New Dawn: Victory Across the Board.”
That’s a little broad and premature by my reading. Nonetheless, Yon’s overall assessment seems accurate. By his and other first-hand accounts, Iraq has turned an important corner.
Veteran NY Times reporter Dexter Filkins, for example, said the following back in September in an email interview with Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic.
“The progress here is remarkable. I came back to Iraq after being away for nearly two years, and honestly, parts of it are difficult for me to recognize. The park out in front of the house where I live — on the Tigris River — was a dead, dying, spooky place. It’s now filled with people — families with children, women walking alone, even at night. That was inconceivable in 2006. The Iraqis who are out there walking in the parks were making their own judgments that it is safe enough for them to go out for a walk. They’re voting with their feet. It’s a wonderful thing to see.”
But as Yon and Filkins both note in various ways, the future is uncertain. The Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis still have very different ideas for the future of Iraq, as do individuals within those groups, and their buy-in to democracy as a way of resolving those conflicting ideas is shallow. They also have a lot of guns and a tendency to use them.
“It’s pretty clear that the calm is very fragile,” says Filkins. “The calm is built on a series of arrangements that are not self-sustaining; indeed, some of which, like the Sunni Awakening, are showing signs of coming apart. So the genie is back in the bottle, but I’m not sure for how long.”
Personally, I will be very pleasantly shocked if the democratic structure we see in place in Iraq is still there five years from now. But for the moment, let’s accept the progress for what it is. A lot has been written about the immense challenges facing Barack Obama as he assumes the presidency, and it’s justified. But on Iraq, he’s gotten a break. Events there have broken in such a way as to allow him to pursue the withdrawal he has long advocated under conditions more positive than most people thought likely.
He’s also putting together a defense/foreign policy team as pragmatic, experienced and sober as his economics team. Clinton at State, Gates at Defense, Marine Gen. Jim Jones (ret.) as national security adviser. This is not the wild-eyed, Marxist/socialist administration that the Republicans depicted in the campaign — quite the opposite. But nobody who paid honest attention to Obama’s statements should be surprised by the fact that the GOP’s caricature was so inaccurate.
On Iraq, Obama’s Cabinet picks would be quite comfortable carrying out the policies laid out by the president-elect in the campaign, and it’s unlikely to be controversial. In effect, the fate of Iraq can increasingly be left in the hands of the Iraqis, where it belonged in the first place. We’ve got other things to worry about.
UPDATE:
I just got off the phone with Michael Yon, who’s embedded with a unit in southern Afghanistan. He wanted to explain that he too thought the headline in his New York Post piece was a little too broad and premature. He is indeed optimistic about the direction things are headed in Iraq, he said, but “Victory Across the Board” is far too sweeping a statement.
He wished me a Happy Thanksgiving, and I couldn’t help thinking that mine will be a lot more comfortable than his will.
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The huge, very large, gargantuan, colossal, unbelievably big bailout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OK, so you knew the bailout was big, with lots of huge numbers being thrown about. But HOW big is it, exactly? If you take the money committed by the federal government and the Federal Reserve — that’s more than $3.92 trillion — how would it stack up compared to previous massive government expenditures, after adjusting for inflation? (Understanding of course that the spending hasn’t run its course yet).
(h/t to Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture)
“Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation-adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big-budget government expenditures - COMBINED:
Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $115.3 billion
- Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million
inflation-adjusted cost: $217 billion
- Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $237 billion
- S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $256 billion
- Korean War: Cost: $54 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $454 billion
- The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est)
Iinflation-adjusted cost: $500 billion (Est)
- Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b
inflation-adjusted cost: $597 billion
- Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $698 billion
- NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $851.2 billion
TOTAL: $3.92 trillion”
To review: The bailout has cost us more than the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the invasion of Iraq, the Vietnam War, the moon-landing program, NASA, the Korean War, the savings and loan crisis and the New Deal ALL PUT TOGETHER.
As the president would say, that’s big. Very big.
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Ohmigoodness … the goddess descends
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Let the swooning begin.
From my colleague Jim Galloway at Political Insider:
Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss just announced that Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the former GOP vice presidential nominee, will campaign for him in Georgia on Monday, capping off his U.S. Senate runoff effort.
“I was thrilled when I got the call that Governor Palin would be able to make the trip to Georgia to campaign with me the day before the runoff election,” Chambliss said in a press release.
Four rallies have been scheduled for Dec. 1: 8:30 a.m. in Augusta, 11 a.m. in Savannah, 1:30 p.m. in Perry, and 4 p.m. in north metro Atlanta.
I’m sure Palin’s arrival is going to help Chambliss get the GOP base fired up to turn out to vote Tuesday, and it’ll be interesting to see how many folks show up at the rallies. (If you plan to attend, you have to register by name at http://www.procatalog.com/saxby/). You could also see this as Palin’s unofficial kickoff of the 2012 campaign.
But back to the present: The polls continue to show Chambliss leading Jim Martin, but within a margin that could conceivably be swung by turnout. However, early voting turnout among black Georgians is well off the pace in the general election, which makes Martin’s climb even steeper.
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Guantanamo an American failure
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Almost 800 men have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, “the worst of the worst” as Donald Rumsfeld called them in trying to fend off demands that they be treated humanely. Yet roughly 520 of those alleged “worst” have since been grudgingly released, the latest being Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver.
Hamdan is being sent to his home nation of Yemen, where he will be kept in prison until Dec. 27 and then set free. The Bush administration had long claimed Hamdan to be a major terrorist threat too dangerous to be released, but a military commission, formed over the administration’s repeated and extended objections, found that Hamdan was a minor figure who in effect should be released for time served.
Likewise, a federal judge in Washington — an appointee of George W. Bush, who has been sympathetic to administration claims of great executive leeway in such cases — last week ordered the release of five native Algerians held since 2001. Originally they had been arrested on suspicion of plotting to bomb the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo, but no evidence was ever found to sustain that claim.
Nonetheless, they have been held in Guantanamo ever since. As Judge Richard Leon revealed, the sole evidence against them was a uncorrobarated claim by a single unknown source claiming that they intended to go to Pakistan for training as jihadists.
Based on that, they were arrested and imprisoned for seven years, and perhaps subjected to torture as well.
Another federal judge has ordered the release of 17 ethnic Uighur detainees from China also still held at Guantanamo. The administration now concedes that they were never enemy combatants and should never have been held, but claims it must continue to imprison the men because no other country is willing to take them.
Some of the “worst of the worst” undoubtedly were just that, and should never be released. But clearly, many if not most of those so labeled by Rumsfeld have turned out to be much less dangerous and in some cases absolutely innocent.
That reality demonstrates both the moral bankruptcy of the Bush approach and its essential anti-American nature. One of the key insights of our Founding Fathers was that government power should never go unchecked, because great unchecked power leads inevitably to arrogance and great unchecked abuse.
The Bush administration nonetheless claimed and exerted such power, and for a time the American people, judicial system and political leadership allowed that claim to stand. It was not our finest moment as a people.
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Will Jan. 20 ever get here?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I don’t know if there’s a way out of this economic mess. But I do believe that Barack Obama is giving us our best shot at finding one.
He has named smart, experienced, hard-headed people to important positions. He seems to be thinking things through (although in uncharted waters like this, “decision-making” can be an inflated term for making an educated guess). He recognizes that a leadership vacuum exists at a critical point in our history, and he is attempting to fill it as best he can given that he won’t take office for almost two months.
Perhaps best of all, he understands the seriousness of the situation, and wants the American people to understand it as well.
“There are no shortcuts or quick fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making - and the economy is likely to get worse before it gets better,” he said today. “Full recovery won’t happen immediately. And to make the investments we need, we’ll have to scour our federal budget, line-by-line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices as well - something I’ll be discussing further tomorrow.”
In effect, Obama is serving much the same role in this crisis that President Bush served in the aftermath of 9/11, when Bush effectively rallied the nation behind him. And I suppose that’s a cautionary tale, because as later events demonstrated, getting the atmospherics right helps only in the short term; getting the decisions right and the people right is a lot tougher and more important in the long term.
For weeks before the election, it seemed like Nov. 4 couldn’t get here soon enough. But that was nothing compared to the wait for Jan. 20.
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Obama may delay tax hike on most affluent
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Given how bad things have gotten — and how quickly — this move to delay a tax increase on the richest Americans probably makes a lot of sense.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama may consider delaying a campaign promise - to roll back tax cuts on high-income Americans - as part of his economic recovery strategy, two aides said on Sunday.
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign strategist who was chosen to be a senior White House adviser, was asked if the tax cuts could be allowed to expire on schedule after tax year 2010 rather than being rolled back by legislation earlier.
“Those considerations will be made,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Bill Daley, an adviser to Obama and Commerce secretary under former President Bill Clinton, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the 2010 scenario “looks more likely than not.”
President George W. Bush’s tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2010. After that they would revert to 2001 levels, when the top individual tax rate was 39.6 percent.
It’s also important to remember that this “radical Marxist” Obama merely proposed to return the top tax rate to where it was for most of the ’90s, not raise it to 80 or 90 percent, as some of the hysteria might have you believe.
The president-elect will announce his economic team in a noon press conference in Chicago, and will no doubt address the larger issues at that point.
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Congratulations! Overnight, you became the proud owner of Citigroup
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WASHINGTON - (Dow Jones) - U.S. federal regulators Sunday agreed to inject an additional $20 billion into Citigroup Inc. (C) and back up to $306 billion worth of the giant bank’s assets in a bid to help stabilize the firm and the broader financial system.
In exchange for the rescue, Citigroup will issue preferred shares to the federal government, adhere to executive pay limits and implement a government program designed to help make home loans more affordable for struggling borrowers….
Under the broad rescue package, the Treasury and the FDIC will provide protection against the possibility of unusually large losses on an asset pool of approximately $306 billion of loans and securities backed by residential and commercial real estate and other such assets, which will remain on Citigroup’s balance sheet.
…..According to a term sheet officials released Sunday, Citigroup must absorb all losses in its portfolio up to $29 billion in addition to its existing loss reserves. The federal government will absorb 90% of losses above that - it’ll take on the first $5 billion through funds provided in the $700 billion bailout plan Congress approved last month and the next $10 billion would come from the FDIC.
Those printing presses down at the Mint must be rolling 24 hours a day…
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Stephen Colbert’s Xmas special … not so special
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We just watched Stephen Colbert’s Xmas special. It was funny — good, but not great. The family consensus was that Colbert owes royalty payments to Pee-Wee Herman, because he “borrowed” so heavily in style, attitude and plot from Pee-Wee’s holiday special from ‘88, which honestly was a lot better.
Besides, Colbert didn’t have the heavenly intonations of the Del Rubio Triplets. Need I say more?
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The GOP’s crush on Sarah Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
.
PRINCETON, NJ — Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are most interested in seeing Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee run for the party’s presidential nomination in 2012. Those three received the highest scores among the 10 possible candidates evaluated in a recent Gallup Panel survey.
According to the poll, 67 percent of Republicans would like to see Palin run four years from now, with 62 percent favorable toward a Romney run and 61 percent toward Huckabee.
And which potential candidates would the party faithful least like to see on the ballot? The least popular by far was Jeb Bush — 61 percent said they would NOT want to see him run, a pretty strong indication of how badly burned the party feels by all things Bush. The second least popular was Newt Gingrich — 48 percent would not like to see him run.
But I have to confess: I am absolutely baffled by the continued GOP support for Palin. I do not get it. My best guess is that those who support her have a very different concept of the presidency than I do. I see the president as someone who actually has to run the country, so I value traits such as competence and knowledge. They see the presidency in more symbolic terms, which means they value those candidates who epitomize America as they wish to see it.
I acknowledge that those are not mutually exclusive categories, that every candidate represents a mixture of pragmatism and symbolism. It’s just a question of which is more important to you as a voter, and to my mind Palin backers have by definition stated that competence and knowledge are less important to them.
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Don’t worry, be happy and turn off that damn TV
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Do you folks watch the Sunday morning talk shows? What’s your favorite?
Personally, I don’t watch and never have and doubt I ever will. Maybe it’s because I deal with this stuff so much already that watching on the weekend seems like doubling your heroin intake. Then again, I also don’t watch during the week. Bill O’Reilly, for example, will always say something within the first 30 seconds to make me change the channel, and I’ve yet to see Keith Olbermann in anything but a sportscasting role.
And then there’s this:
“Happy people spend more free hours socializing, reading and participating in religious activities, while unhappy people watch 30 percent more television, according to new research on American life.
In a study that is among the first to compare daily free-time activities with perceptions of personal contentment, researchers found that television hours were elevated for people who described themselves as “not too happy.” On average, the down-and-out reported an extra 5.6 hours of tube time a week, compared with their happiest counterparts.”
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Obama tries to calm the fear…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President-elect Barack Obama is still almost two months from taking office, but in the meantime he’s stepping in to do what he can to build confidence and give people hope that help is coming.
Here’s the New York Times version:
CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday that he had started work on a sustained, two-year economic stimulus plan designed to create or save 2.5 million jobs, funnel money toward public works programs to repair the country’s failing infrastructure and invest in alternative energy programs.
Mr. Obama’s plan, which he announced in the Democratic radio address, is broader than the pledges he offered while campaigning for president. He said the deepening financial outlook demanded more robust action, so he directed his economic team to devise “a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face that I intend to sign soon after taking office.”
Mr. Obama said he hoped to have the plan completed, approved by Congress and ready for his signature shortly after he takes office in January.
“The news this week has only reinforced the fact that we are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions,” Mr. Obama said. “We now risk falling into a deflationary spiral that could increase our massive debt even further.”
If you face a big problem, you do big things to fix it. But it’s also true that there are no guarantees.
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A Marine general may be national security adviser
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The selection of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is getting all the headlines, for obvious reasons. But the most intriguing and revealing of the likely nominations would be that of Gen. Jim Jones, the retired four-star general and former Marine commandant, as national security adviser.
Barack Obama, the supposed wild-eyed Marxist from Illinois, is already building a seriously mainstream national security/foreign policy apparatus, stocked with experienced people with impeccable credentials. The selection of Jones, a close friend of John McCain, would cement that impression. The general is revered among his fellow Marines and is also highly regarded in Washington and elsewhere for his wisdom and independence.
Some on the left may see such selections as a betrayal of sorts, but it is entirely consistent with everything Barack Obama said during the campaign. And as Obama starts to do the controversial but sensible things he needs to do, such as withdrawing from Iraq to focus on Afghanistan and restoring fiscal sanity to the Pentagon budget, he’ll have the people within his administration to both point out the landmines and provide him political cover.
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Hillary taking State Department
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The high-profile seats in the Obama Cabinet are filling up: Clinton at State, Geithner at Treasury, Richardson at Commerce, joining Holder at Justice and probably Daschle at Health and Human Services.
They’re all strong picks — Wall Street in particular seems pleased by Geithner, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. These are smart, competent people.
Personally, I’m a little surprised that Clinton chose to take the job and leave her Senate seat, but reports are she wasn’t all that happy as one of 100 anyway. Some politicians are born legislators, others are meant to run things. I think she’s the latter, and apparently she thinks so too.
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More ominous news for the GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An irrelevant Republican Party does no one any good. It isn’t good for the Republicans, obviously, and over the long term it also isn’t good for the Democrats, who need an effective opposition to keep them in line.
Most of all, it isn’t good for America.
But take a look at the latest Gallup Poll findings:
PRINCETON, NJ — The Republican Party’s image has gone from bad to worse over the past month, as only 34 percent of Americans in a Nov. 13-16 Gallup Poll say they have a favorable view of the party, down from 40 percent in mid-October. The 61 percent now holding an unfavorable view of the GOP is the highest Gallup has recorded for that party since the measure was established in 1992.
Democrats, on the other hand, are viewed favorably by 55 percent of Americans. That’s a spread of more than 20 points between the parties, and it’s a margin that is proving durable. The last time the two parties had fairly equal favorability ratings was almost three years ago.
Among independents, 32 percent rate the GOP favorably, while 47 percent feel favorably toward the Democrats. And while 59 percent of Republicans say the solution to their party’s problem is to become more conservative, that sentiment is shared by only 35 percent of independents. Getting more conservative may make a lot of Republicans feel better about themselves, but it’s not going to bring in new supporters.
For a lot of people in Georgia, where the GOP is still dominant, those Gallup numbers may be hard to believe. It doesn’t jibe with what they see everyday. But when you account for the party’s continued strong standing in the South, its numbers in the rest of the country must really be low to produce national numbers this bad.
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Delayed inauguration date has to be fixed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is a dangerous interregnum for the American people, with a lameduck president whose mistakes have stripped him of credibility, influence and apparently confidence, and a new president still two months from taking power. That’s a problem we’ll eventually need to address with a constitutional amendment that moves up the date of inauguration for future presidents.
The current date was set by the 20th amendment, which accelerated the transfer of power from the original March 4 to the current Jan. 20. Not surprisingly, that change occurred in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, when Americans decided they couldn’t afford to wait four months between presidents. The amendment was passed by Congress in 1932 and in less than a year it had been ratified by enough states to take effect, which suggests the seriousness with which it was taken.
Now, with another major financial crisis underway, the lack of leadership from Washington could be a real problem. In one sense there’s not a lot a president could do — there’s no magic bill he could sign or rule he could change to make things better. But the markets are always driven by psychology, and never more so than in a moment like this. The difference between a sense of drift in Washington and a sense of strong leadership at the helm could be significant.
As the New York Times reports:
“We can’t get from here to Feb. 1 if the current ‘who’s in charge?’ situation continues,” said Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG, an investment firm, arguing that Congress should adopt a stimulus package, including temporary tax cuts, as rapidly as possible. Instead, he said, Washington seems paralyzed…
The Standard & Poor’s index of 500 stocks fell by more than 6 percent on two consecutive days, Wednesday and Thursday, something that had not happened since July 20 and 21, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, when panic was brought on by collapsing commodity prices.”
The current collapse may halt, at least temporarily, when the New York markets open this morning, given what happened overnight. According to the AP, “European and Asian stock markets rebounded Friday as expectations of a recovery on Wall Street prompted investors to scoop up battered financial and energy shares.” But it’s hard to argue with any certainty that this is the worst of it.
Back before the election, legal scholar Sanford Levinson foresaw just this calamity, even proposing a possible if unlikely solution:
“As it happens, one doesn’t need to amend the Constitution to ‘solve’ this problem at least for this year: Dick Cheney could resign on November 5, to be replaced by the winner of the election. This could take place simply by following the procedures of the 25th Amendment, which allows a president to nominate a new vice president should the office become vacant, subject to congressional confirmation. Upon such confirmation, President Bush could then resign, to be succeeded by the newly installed Vice President….”
As Levinson acknowledges, that’s not going to happen. For the moment, we’re stuck with both our current president and our current system. One problem is two months from a solution; fixing the second will take a little more time.
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The Fairness Doctrine boogeyman
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Talk-radio hosts play their listeners as well as Yo Yo Ma plays the cello, stroking a string and making their audience respond exactly the way they want. It’s bizarre how easily they can manipulate people who like to think of themselves as sturdy, independent-minded Americans.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the fabricated right-wing outrage about reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine. Under that long-abandoned rule, radio and TV stations that use the public airways were required to give equal time to various sides of every political issue. The rule was well-intended, but in practical terms radio and TV stations found it safer to avoid political discussion altogether rather than risk running afoul of the law.
For that and other reasons, the Fairness Doctrine was abandoned more than 20 years ago, a change that quickly led to the boom in right-wing talk radio.
However, with Democrats in control of Congress and Barack Obama about to become president, the maestros of talk radio are eager to take advantage. They know that the more threatened their audience feels, the higher their ratings get. And what better way to get their listeners riled up than to claim that the Democrats are out to silence talk radio itself, the medium that brings conservatives the truth as they want to know it?
So for months, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others have been warning their audiences that once in power, the Democrats plan to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Politicians such as Newt Gingrich have joined the chorus, and the issue is now being cited as a critical reason why Saxby Chambliss has to be re-elected to the Senate. Right-wing pundits insist the issue will be part of Obama’s agenda in his first 100 days in office.
But of course, it’s all made-up nonsense, backed by no evidence whatsoever. In the current issue of the New Republic (subs. req. online), Marin Cogan goes looking for those Democrats supposedly plotting to kill talk radio but ends up empty handed.
Obama, for example, is on the record as very clearly opposing a new Fairness Doctrine (To which the paranoid replies: “That’s exactly what he WOULD say, now isn’t it?”) Other top Democrats questioned by Cogan either laugh off the idea or dismiss it as ridiculous. “That’s a completely made-up issue,” the press secretary to Sen. Dick Durbin told Cogan, stressing that Durbin has “no plans, no language, no nothing.”
The bottom line is that the Fairness Doctrine is not going to come back and it never was going to come back, and those on the right who got suckered by this scam ought to be angry at being played for fools.
But they won’t be. To the contrary, just as quickly as one justification for paranoia disappears, another one is certain to emerge. Among a certain crowd, paranoia is a steady state that continues independent of evidence or proof.
In a famous essay written back in 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter traced the evolution of what he called “the paranoid style in American politics” from the earliest days of the country up to what was then modern times. More than four decades later, his description of the paranoid narrative remains as fresh and accurate as the day it was written:
“But the modern right wing … feels dispossessed,” Hofstadter wrote. “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.”
Again, that was written more than 40 years ago, a passage of time that confirms Hofstadter’s wisdom that the paranoid style is enduring. The only thing that has changed is the degree of influence that the paranoid style has since achieved through talk radio, and the grip it now holds on the Republican Party.
In fact, the Democrats have every reason to encourage rather than break that relationship, and they seem to know it. As the paranoid right talks amongst itself on radio, Fox News and conservative web sites, egging each other into ever higher fits of hysteria, they construct an alternative America and alternative reality that is increasingly divorced from the reality perceived by mainstream America.
And when conservative politicians make the mistake of exposing that alternative reality to the mainstream, as U.S. Rep. Paul Broun did recently, they only make that alienation more obvious.
In his piece, Hofstadter made it clear that he was not using the term “paranoid” in the clinical sense. As he put it, “it is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.”
“The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point,” Hofstadter wrote.
Again, nothing has changed. In a piece this week in the Wall Street Journal, writer Thomas Frank quoted the words of Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus in an Oct. 17 conference call.
“This is the demise of a civilization,” Marcus is quoted as saying about the election. “This is how a civilization disappears. I’m sitting here as an elder statesman, and I’m watching this happen, and I don’t believe it.”
Marcus was not referring specifically to Obama in those remarks, but there’s no question that the president-elect stokes such emotions by his mere existence. Everything about Obama — his race, his age, his intelligence, his name, his back story — feeds the paranoid’s sense of dispossession identified by Hofstadter.
In fact, if you had to design someone to perfectly epitomize their deepest fears, Obama would be it. Over the next four to eight years, he’s destined to make Limbaugh, Hannity and their ilk even richer than they are today, and make their listeners seem even more crazy.
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GOP appealing to a shrinking America
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I wrote a few days ago about the idea that there is no single “America,” that the country is constantly evolving and that each of us has our own personal concept of what America ought to be and is.
One of the biggest problems confronting the Republican Party is the fact that they have built their party on the basis of an America that no longer exists demographically.
Alan Abramovitz, the very sharp political science professor at Emory here in Atlanta, runs the numbers for us:
“The declining proportion of married white Christians in the electorate has important political implications because in recent years married white Christians have been among the most loyal supporters of the Republican Party. …. Between the middle of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, the proportion of whites has fallen by about 15 percentage points, the proportion of married persons has fallen by about 25 percentage points, and the proportion of Christian identifiers has fallen by about 10 percentage points.
“Married individuals still make up a large majority of the electorate, whites are still close to 80 percent of the electorate, and Christians are still over 80 percent of the electorate. However, the combined impact of the changes illustrated in Figure 1 has been enormous. Married white Christians have gone from close to 80 percent of the electorate in the 1950s to just over 40 percent of the electorate in the first decade of the 21st century. Moreover, the data displayed in Figure 2 show that the decline in married white Christians has been even more drastic among younger Americans. The proportion of married white Christians among voters under the age of 30 has plummeted from almost 80 percent in the 1950s to less than 20 percent in the first decade of the 21st century.”
Robert Lang, writing in Politico, makes a similar point after noting how quickly the minority population of the United States is growing:
“The bottom line for Republicans is that no matter how this population is defined, an increasing number of current minorities are voting for Democrats.
Republicans can, of course, switch their strategy and make more direct appeals to minority voters. As recently as 2004, President George W. Bush almost won the Latino vote. But at the moment, the Republicans seem branded as the party of white people. Furthermore, much of the Republican base — especially those listening to talk radio — believe the U.S. is being flooded with immigrants (legal and illegal). It may be hard to pivot and embrace diversity without alienating the GOP base. By contrast, many whites in the Democratic Party are comfortable with diversity and now form a transracial coalition with minority voters.”
I have some sympathy for the GOP because, in a sense, the party faces a very similar challenge to that confronting newspapers. Changing demographics, technologies and lifestyles are undercutting their traditional customer base, and to survive they’re going to have to find a way to reach out to woo new customers without alienating their old ones.
It ain’t easy.
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I’m with Mitt Romney on the Detroit bailout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve been reading everything I could find on the proposed bailout of Detroit, trying to come to a definitive conclusion. Part of me wanted to let them fail as punishment for being so blind and obstinent for so long; another part of me worried about the consequences that failure would have, with ripples affecting the livelihoods of millions of innocent people.
At the very least, it was clear that we had to demand some serious concessions from both the United Auto Workers and industry management if we were to rescue them from bankruptcy. Otherwise, the $25 billion would only delay the inevitable pain.
Over the last few days, though, it became more and more obvious that Detroit didn’t quite grasp the seriousness of the situation, and that the concessions they were willing to offer wouldn’t be sufficient. Clarity came in reading Mitt Romney’s piece in today’s NY Times, in which he argued against a bailout and in favor of a managed bankruptcy.
Romney’s professional work in private equity and leveraged buyouts, combined with his family background in the auto industry, gave the piece a lot of credibility, and he argued his case well. I found it convincing. (It also reminded me of how intelligent, moderate and well-informed Romney had seemed in his primary-season interview with the AJC editorial board, a side he unfortunately kept largely hidden in his effort to woo the conservative wing in his party).
Romney’s piece also made me reassess how Barack Obama is handling the issue. He’s a sly one, that guy. The president elect has come out publicly in favor of a bailout in return for concessions, as he had to do given his labor backing and campaign rhetoric. But he doesn’t seem to be pushing hard for the immediate action that GM, Ford and Chrysler claim is needed.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the sense that he too is willing to let the companies fail, knowing that once they do, he’ll have a lot more freedom in trying to put them back together in a way that makes sense.
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Obama shows no sign of taking it slow
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Barack Obama ran on a platform of change, a rather vague theme that left many legitimately asking just what kind of change he had in mind. Last night, in a discussion sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, we got some early clues about what’s coming. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s White House chief of staff, suggested the administration will seek change on a large scale across a range of issues.
“What used to be long-term problems — be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area — things that we had postponed for too long and were long term, are now immediate and must be dealt with,” Emanuel said. “This crisis provides us with the opportunity to do things we could not do before.”
With Obama still two months from taking office, details are still sketchy. But the ambitious tone of the administration is already pretty clear, and it presents Republicans with a dilemma about how to respond.
Conceivably, they could argue that big changes aren’t really needed, but I don’t think that’s going to get them very far with the American public right now. In the latest Gallup poll, only 13 percent of those polled said