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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: March 2009

The Ultimate David Brooks Column

David Brooks penned a column for The New York Times today that is destined to become a classic of its type. His editors seem to think so as well, titling his essay: “A Moderate Manifesto.”
Its main thrust is to agree with conservative arguments that the Obama administration’s budget proposal is a radical big-government, class-warfare, tax-and-spend package that would remake the country in a horrifying fashion. Indeed, “moderates” are explicitly called upon by their would-be chieftain to join the Right in opposing the whole thing. But what makes the argument both distinctive and incoherent is Brooks’ concession that the key components of the proposal all make sense:

We [moderates] sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. We like his investments in education and energy innovation. We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs.

So what’s the huge beef? It’s just all too much:

[T]he Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once….
We end up with an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new.

And with that assertion, Brooks is off to the races, providing a lurid spin on specific Obama proposals that are apparently “unexceptional” in themselves, but are somehow terrifyingly radical when attempted in combination. Consider his treatment of the Obama tax proposals which, as I am sure he knows, are basically designed to restore the structure of federal income tax rates as they existed prior to 2001.

The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward.

Then there’s this howler:

The U.S. has always had vibrant neighborhood associations. But in its very first budget, the Obama administration raises the cost of charitable giving. It punishes civic activism and expands state intervention.

Brooks appears to be referring here to a relatively minor Obama tax proposal that would further limit (they are already limited now) the total value of deductions for high earners, a very conventional way to ensure effective progressive rates of taxation. To hear Brooks, this is a direct assault on the Tocquevillian concept of voluntary association.
He doesn’t bother to extend the argument much further than these pathetic examples of Obama’s alleged radicalism, pivoting instead to his trumpet call to “moderates” to stand athwart history yelling “Stop!” He does make this observation that pretty much exposes the underlying “thinking” of his position:

[Moderates] will have to take the economic crisis seriously and not use it as a cue to focus on every other problem under the sun. They’re going to have to offer an agenda that inspires confidence by its steadiness rather than shaking confidence with its hyperactivity.

David Brooks is not a stupid man. He knows that progressives aren’t simply “using” the economic crisis to “focus on every other problem under the sun.” They believe, as Brooks sometimes appears to believe, that you cannot separate “the economic crisis” from health care costs, an inefficient and unsustainable energy system, an underperforming education system, or indeed, from a tax code that undermines middle-class work and rewards upper-class wealth. If moving towards universal health care is the best way to restrain uncontrolled health care costs (a huge burden for both the public and private sectors) while mitigating the real-life damage wrought by the
economic crisis, why would you not want to do that? If a retooled energy system does indeed position the United States to dominate a huge and fast-growing global market in alternative energy technologies, does it make any sense to wait on initiatives to achieve that in the pursuit of “moderation?” And if addressing the fundamental causes and dire consequences of poorly regulated financial institutions requires “more government,” what’s the point in insisting on “less government”–the supposed “Hamiltonian” principle Brooks insists Americans cherish–at the risk of producing the same disastrous results?
The “moderation” Brooks is championing seems to represent little more than an instinctive reaction against any coherent plan of action, and a horror of following through with the logic of progressive–and actually, “moderate”–analysis of why the economy has collapsed and what, specifically, needs to be done to revive the country.
In the title of this post, I’ve called Brooks’ essay today “The Ultimate David Brooks Column.” That’s because it epitomizes two key Brooksian vices that have always maddeningly accompanied the virtues of his fluid and interesting writing and his revulsion against Movement Conservatism: “moderation” is defined as compromise, any kind of compromise, and “moderates” are invariably urged to pursue a course of action that coincides with the immediate political needs of the Republican Party.
On this latter point, Brooks may well continue to ventilate his disdain for the Rush Limbaughs of the world. But you will note that this column essentially urges “moderates” to join Rush in derailing Obama’s agenda, with an asterisk suggesting that somewhere down the road, they will need to develop and support an “alternative” agenda that represents the better angels of Barack Obama’s nature. The whole thing reads like an extended rationalization for “moderate” Republicans and Blue Dogs to cower in fear before the savage Obama-hatred of the Right, comforting themselves that they will eventually rule the country when the equally-extreme Left and Right have finally become exhausted.
Anyone tempted to agree with Brooks’ “manifesto” needs to have his or her head and conscience examined.


Israeli Echoes

I’ve finished reading Stan Greenberg’s new book, Dispatches From the War Room, and will have more to say later this week about a couple of big strategic issues it raises that merit considerable discussion.
But for today, thinking about the remarkable chapter in Stan’s book about his interactions with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak during the intense period of negotiations with the Palestinians in 1999 and 2000, I’m struck by some of the echoes easily heard in the frantic efforts of Bibi Netanyahu to form a government in the wake of the recent Israeli elections. It’a all particularly ironic since Bibi was a major player in that fateful period of Middle East history as well.
As Stan explains in detail, Barak won the prime ministership of Israel in 1999 after a campaign that focused on craven attitude of Netanyahu towards ultra-orthodox parties who kept him in power in exchange for heavy subsidies to religious schools and a continuing exemption of yeshiva students from Israel’s otherwise-universal military service obligation. At Greenberg’s urging, Barak successfully tied these Likud political concessions to serious problems in the Israeli economy, and to deep cultural resentment of the ultra-orthodox death grip on family policy.
After the election, however, Barak formed a government with the assistance of the ultra-orthodox Shas Party, and sacrificed much of his domestic agenda in the pursuit of stunningly bold but eventually unsuccessful peace negotiations with Syria and with Yasir Arafat.
This year Netanyahu’s trying to form a government after an Israeli election defined not by domestic but by Israel-Palestine issues, but is running into familiar problems in trying to put together a coalition of right-wing parties who are at odds over cultural and economic policies. As Gershom Gorenberg explains for The American Prospect:

“Right wing,” in Israeli terms, is defined by attitudes toward land and peace. It translates as unwillingness to give up any significant portion of West Bank territory, unqualified support for settlement-building, and disinterest in reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s own Likud and the other parties of the right share that stance, with gradations in their bellicosity. In other respects, they have much to fight about.
Economically, Netanyahu is a free-market fundamentalist. As finance minister under Ariel Sharon between 2003 and 2005, he cut income tax, particularly on top earners. In parallel, he slashed government payments to large families — a blow to the ultra-Orthodox minority. Two of the right-wing parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, represent the ultra-Orthodox. To regain their support, Netanyahu has apparently promised to backpedal his stance on aid to families. But the budget battles won’t end there.
There’s a cultural fault line as well. Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Israel Is Our Home Party, is best known for demagogy against Israel’s Arab minority. But Lieberman’s platform also includes introducing a form of civil marriage. That plank is crucial to his key constituency, former Soviet immigrants, many of whom aren’t Jewish under religious law and can’t marry through the state rabbinate. The change is anathema to Netanyahu’s other presumed coalition partners. Before the election, Shas’ aging rabbinic leader, Ovadiah Yosef, saidthat anyone who backed Lieberman “supports Satan.” Shas has 11 Knesset seats; Lieberman’s party has 15. If either bolts a coalition of the right, Netanyahu will need to call new elections.

According to Gorenberg, Netanyahu is desperate to get out of this box by forming a “national unity” government including the ex-Likud “centrists” of Kadima, along with Labor–now headed again, ironically, by Ehud Barak–that will not only bypass the intra-right-wing fights over economic and cultural parties, but could help insulate Bibi from international and particularly U.S. hostility to his foot-dragging over peace talks.
It doesn’t look like this will happen, but the contrast between Barak in 1999 and Netanyahu ten years later is fascinating. Barak wanted a broader coalition to take audacious steps towards peace-with-security. Bibi wants a broader coalition to maintain the status quo.
Read Dispatches From the War Room if you want to see the differences between these two models of leadership.


Sebelius To HHS

Today’s official announcement that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius would replace Tom Daschle as the designee for Secretary of Health and Human Services was no surprise, but as someone who’s watched her career pretty closely since well before she was elected governor, I certainly think she’s a very good choice. She’s smart, focused, fully in control of her ego, and has a wealth of relevant experience. Like any governor, she knows public health care programs quite well, and as a former state insurance commissioner, she understands the perilous intersections of public policy and private markets in health care as well.
Anyone considering her too much of a “centrist” should be aware of how effectively she’s made herself anathema to hard-core anti-abortionists in a state that used to be one of their playgrounds. And she’s a very good politician, as her success in hyper-Republican Kansas attests. No, she hasn’t been able to get the GOP-controlled Kansas legislature to go along with her efforts to expand public health care coverage, but she now joins an administration that’s in a stronger position to overcome Republican resistance, and can probably help pull a few GOPers across the line (it’s interesting that both Bob Dole and Pat Roberts chose to appear at her White House announcement ceremony).
Some of you may know this from the speculation over Sebelius as a possible Obama Veep back during the summer, but she’s also from a pretty notable political family. She’s the daughter of John J. “Jack” Gilligan, who was governor of Ohio back in the 1970s, and a much revered figure in Buckeye Democratic circles before and after that. They are, in fact, the first father-daughter combo who have both served as governors.
My favorite moment with Kathleen Sebelius was the time I had the opportunity to tell her an anecdote about her father she had never heard before, told to me by a friend who was his press secretary during a failed U.S. Senate run in 1968. Gilligan is famously a cerebral sort, and his campaign staff was trying to make him more of a regular guy for the benefit of blue-collar swing voters. So they arranged a photo op wherein he would go to a serious working-class bar in some seriously working-class community like Parma and consume a shot-and-a-beer.
Gilligan wasn’t that happy with the idea, but gamely went to the bar, trailing cameras and reporters, on the appointed night, when the joint was full of sweaty, beefy factory workers. On cue, the bartender asked him to name his poison, and looking right at my friend the press secretary, he said: “I’ll have a glass of sherry.”
Let’s hope Secretary Sebelius fully inherited that sense of humor. With health care reform on tap, she’ll need it.


Raised Stakes

It’s safe to say that a new conventional wisdom arose in Washington last week, which solidified over a weekend of gabbing: Barack Obama’s budget proposal does indeed reflect an effort to implement a generation of progressive policy thinking–nothing more, nothing less. It’s all there, and it’s all that’s there, from restored progressivity in income tax rates, to a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, to a step towards a privately-delivered but publicly-guaranteed universal health care system, to a big increase in the federal involvement in elementary and secondary education, and so on through a long list.
That the budget is being almost universally denounced by Republicans as the work of the devil, or of Lenin and Stalin, is a sign of how little progress progressives have made towards implementing their consensus agenda over the last couple of decades.
One reason for conservative shrieking about the Obama budget is that they may be at an institutional disadvantage in defeating it, as opposed to the economic stimulus package. If Obama and his congressional allies are able to get the bulk of the legislation contained in a budget “reconciliation” package, it will be subject to special time limitations and will be immune from a Senate filibuster. That’s how Ronald Reagan got much of his agenda enacted in one bill in 1981. If, as the Right has been saying lately, Obama is determined to end the Reagan era once and for all, it’s certainly appropriate that he use the same fast-track procedures as the Gipper.


Right-Wing Populist Illusions

Note: this item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on February 27, 2009.
In a column on the Rick Santelli rant against “losers” on CNBC and the excited reaction it received in conservative circles, Jon Chait offers this key insight about the instant mythology aroused by both Santelli and Joe the Plumber:

The only thing that separated Santelli’s rant from any other similar outburst that could be found on Fox News or talk radio was that it seemed to represent the vox populi. Santelli was not previously known as a right-wing ideologue–mainly because he was not known for much of anything–so he came across as a fed-up investor, just as Wurzelbacher initially cast himself as an undecided voter skeptical of progressive taxation. And Santelli was surrounded by actual people who dug his message, people he described (absurdly) as a representative sample of American opinion. His rant thus appeared like a genuine expression of popular revolt.

Interesting, then, that Santelli has since described himself as an “Ayn Rander.” Whatever else you think that allegiance represents (Chait notes that it certainly makes opposition to any sort of government relief efforts axiomatic), it ain’t “populism,” unless there’s some hitherto unnoticed popular enthusiasm for the ideas of privatizing the sidewalks or denouncing religion as “the mysticism of the mind.”
There does seem to be an interesting pattern here of self-styled conservative “populists” turning out to be people with some pretty marginal political associations. Joe the Plumber was recently registered to vote as a member of the now-defunct Natural Law Party, best known for its advocacy of transcendental meditation. Sarah Palin had a well-established friendly relationship with the Alaska Independence Party, itself affiliated with the far-right theocratic Constitution Party.
Men and Women In the Street may well harbor some strange views on some issues, but by and large they don’t choose to vote for or support tiny extremist parties or ideological movements, which is why they are tiny. Conventional conservatives should probably look a little more closely at their “populist” champions before designating them as representatives of vast undercurrents of public opinion that somehow aren’t reflected in actual elections.


Redefining the “Center”

Note: this item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on February 24, 2009
Matt Miller has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal which adds to the minority of us progressive gabbers who think that Barack Obama’s “bipartisanship” is aimed at a political realignment rather than short-term compromises with Republicans in Washington.

The president has his eye on a bigger prize than winning a few Republican votes for his stimulus package or having a conservative in his cabinet. He aims to move the political center in America to the left, much as Ronald Reagan moved it to the right. The only way he can achieve this goal is to harness the energies and values of both parties.

Matt doesn’t quite put it this way, but the more concrete Obama objective is to expand the Democratic electoral base by consolidating high levels of support among independents and exploiting the growing divide between Republican politicians and a significant minority of GOP voters.
It’s obviously too early to judge whether this approach is working, but a new Washington Post-ABC poll out today certainly shows how it might work in terms of voter categories.
The Post‘s write-up of the poll dwells on the sharp reduction in Republican support for Obama’s job performance: it’s down to 37% from 62% on Inaugural Day. Well, of course it is; Inaugural Day was and always has been a “peak moment” for any new president, and a month of relentless pounding of Obama by GOP elected officials was bound to resonate with the conservative “base” who heard him described as an elitist socialist baby-killer throughout the presidential campaign.
But Obama’s job approval rating among independents is 67%. Meanwhile, the percentage of voters who think Obama’s trying to compromise with Republicans in Congress is 74%, while the percentage who think Republicans in Congress are trying to compromise with him is 34%. Unsurprisingly, while Obama’s overall job approval rating is 68%, and that of Democrats in Congress is 50%, Republicans in Congress earn a job approval rating of only 38%.
All this could change, but the trajectory in public opinion is towards an isolation of congressional Republicans, who are helping this dynamic along by their behavior towards Obama and the economic crisis itself. You can call it “redefining the center” or simply “realignment,” but if it continues, Obama and the Democratic Party could be well-positioned for the future.


Uptick In ‘Symbolically Conservative, Operationally Liberal’ Constituency May Steer Future

Note: this item by J.P. Green was originally published on February 23, 2009.
Paul Starr has a short, but insightful post, “Breaking the Grip of the Past” at The American Prospect today, which sheds light on president Obama’s political strategy. As Starr explains:

For Barack Obama and the Democrats, the problem is not just the hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party and the right-wing media echo chamber. Given the urgency of present circumstances, the critical impediment may lie in the ambivalent center — among the middle-of-the-road Democrats and Republicans who hold the margin of votes in the Senate, much of the business and opinion-leader establishment, and a large part of the public who are not strongly affiliated with any party or ideological position.
Winning over those groups poses the key challenge if Congress and the new administration are to free the country from the dead right hand of the past. Obama’s mix of conciliatory and assertive stances — an openness to talking with the other side and a willingness to concede, in principle, that it may have a point, yet a determination when pressed to fight for his policies — is not just an expression of his personality. It’s the rational strategy of a politician who can’t get his program through unless he peels off some part of the opposition.

Starr goes on to note Obama’s tendency “not to confront conservatism in general terms” which Starr believes makes some sense because “Many Americans who identify themselves as conservative nonetheless favor liberal positions on specific policies” — a “symbolically conservative, but operationally liberal” group estimated at 22 percent of the public in 2004 by James A. Stimson in his book Tides of Consent. Starr believes surveys indicate there may be a “big increase” in this group since the election.
Starr believes Obama’s ‘whatever works’ rhetoric is calibrated to address this group and the “deep American strain of post-partisanship.” WaPo columnist E.J. Dionne sees the evolving consensus on bipartisanship a little differently in his column today on “Obama’s FDR Moment“:

And when it comes to bipartisanship, the point is not the numerical count of Republicans who vote for this or that. It’s whether frightened citizens sense that government is working…”People want the basic stuff fixed,” said state Rep. Vernon Sykes, a Democrat who chairs the Finance and Appropriations Committee in the Ohio House. “They don’t have a romantic notion of bipartisanship. They just want people to come together to solve problems.”

Post or bipartisanship notwithstanding, Starr credits Obama with drawing a line in the sand against more tax cuts for the rich and do-nothing government. Starr feels this rhetorically-nuanced approach could well “educate the public about the folly of conservative views and help move the country toward a new progressive center.” However, Starr warns,

it’s crucial, perhaps more for others than for Obama, to continue to press the case that our present problems have ideological roots — that they are not due equally to all sides but rather to the mistaken premises, malignant neglect, and sometimes outright malfeasance of a long era of conservative government…But if he concedes too much, it could be another version of disabling triangulation

It’s a delicate balancing act, and the President’s communications skills in educating the public will be on wide display tomorrow, when he addresses the nation. It may be Obama’s “FDR moment,” but he should also remember MLK’s dictum “Ultimately, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.”