As the bumper sticker up in the Noteworthy box indicates, something pretty remarkable happened yesterday: the House GOP’s leader on energy policy, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, publicly apologized to BP’s CEO for the terrible treatment he’s been receiving from the Obama administration. Barton was particularly aggrieved by the “shakedown” that convinced BP to devote so much of its hard-earned profits to relief and restitution for affected Gulf residents.
Jonathan Allen and Jake Sherman of Politico summed up the political impact of Barton’s act of fealty to Big Oil quite well:

It would have been bad enough for the GOP if a backbencher had accidentally strayed wildly off message, but Barton, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is the face of the party on energy policy — and his comments were intentional. So rather than talking about BP’s culpability and the Obama administration’s response, Washington was fixated on a Texas Republican’s seemingly tone-deaf comments.

It appears that Barton was literally dragged into a back room and ordered to retract his apology to BP by House GOP leaders, which, of course, ensured that people who hadn’t heard about the original brouhaha were informed of it. What would be really interesting, however, is to know how many GOP solons privately agreed with Barton’s original comments, and symphathize with BP’s plight as it is demonized by the socialist bully Barack Obama.

If, as appears likely, cap-and-trade legislation is not going to be enacted this year or any other time soon, it represents more than a setback for the Obama administration (or for the environment). It’s also another blow to the high concept of using market mechanisms rather than direct government control to address major public policy challenges.
Cap-and-trade was originally designed, after all, as an alternative to command-and-control environmental regulations, which is why it was once championed by Republicans, particularly during and after its successful use in reducing acid rain in the 1990s.
But as the New York Times‘ David Leonhardt (with an exclamation point from Jonathan Chait) explained this week, Republicans have abandoned cap-and-trade just when it might be most useful, with some former advocates, ironically, embracing command-and-control:

[T]he great economic strength of market systems like cap and trade also happens to be their political weakness. They set prices and allow people to react. In the process, market systems acknowledge that reducing pollution may actually cost a little bit of money.
Politicians don’t like to admit this, because voters don’t like it. Accepting higher costs is especially hard when the economy is weak. So Congressional Democrats have been repackaging their energy bills to make them look less and less market-oriented. Senator John McCain, who supported a permit system for carbon as the Republican presidential nominee, no longer does. Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, has reversed his position as well.
What does Mr. Graham now favor? A series of command-and-control regulations. He has introduced a bill with Senator Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, that would mandate specific standards for cars, trucks, homes and offices. It would also give the energy secretary the power to award loans to companies he thought could do a good job of setting up programs to retrofit buildings. State officials would do the same for factories. The bill, in short, puts more faith in government than the market.

Leonhardt clearly believes that the transparency of cap-and-trade when it comes to costs is its major political flaw. That’s definitely a factor, but I’d argue that something more fundamental is going on. Once Democrats embraced cap-and-trade, Republicans began retreating from it as a simple matter of politics. And this distancing effort has been immensely reinforced by the rightward trend in the GOP during the last few years, in which leaders who simply denied there was any climate change problem, and/or that government had any useful role to play on the issue, have been in the ascendancy. So “cap-and-tax” was demonized and essentially placed off limits for Republican politicians, to the point where those like Lindsay Graham and Dick Lugar who weren’t quite in the “denialist” camp found it easier to just support direct federal regulation.
We saw a similar dynamic play out on health reform, where a market-based managed competition model long supported by Republicans, and championed quite recently by Mitt Romney, became toxic the moment it was fully advanced by Barack Obama. And even as they savaged ObamaCare as “socialized medicine,” Republicans saw little irony in posing as last-ditch defenders of Medicare, a relic of an earlier Democratic drive for a government-run single-payer system.
On both health care and climate change, it’s not surprising that many progressives are impatient with Obama’s determination to promote market-based approaches that the supposed party of market-based policy, the GOP, will no longer support. But nobody should for a moment mistake the identity of the prime mover in shifting the political ground away from the once-promising “centrist” convergence on using market mechanisms to address public sector challenges. The GOP could have declared partial victory and celebrated the Democratic Party’s abandonment of big government solutions, and then fought it out over the details. Instead, Republicans have burned down every structure on the potential common ground that Americans seem to crave. They may be able to succeed for a while in opportunistically deploring the inability of Democrats to get anything done. But if and when Republicans regain power, they may well discover that the GOP policy arsenal has been emptied by their own hands.

As President Obama struggles though a host of problems, from the Gulf oil spill to the refusal of the Senate to support a new jobs bill or a cap-and-trade system, you can hear Republicans repeating a strange refrain that first became prominent in their rhetoric during the health reform fight: this president is arrogant and perhaps even tyrannical for trying to enact the policy agenda that he campaigned on in 2008 in the teeth of Republican and (in some cases) popular opposition.
Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics has been particularly insistent on this line of argument, with “bully” being the latest unlikely epithet employed to attack this embattled president:

For somebody who seems detached from the details of policy and largely uninterested in legislative wrangling, Barack Obama sure does come across sometimes like a political bully. But this is not bullying some obstinate backbench legislator. Instead, this is bullying the American people. With health care reform, he basically told the country that he didn’t care what it thought. The fact that people opposed the bill was proof they didn’t know what they were talking about. Now, apparently, the evolving strategy on energy is the same. Don’t like cap-and-trade? That’s your problem, not his. Plan to vote out Democrats in favor of the idea? Like he cares. He’ll pass it anyway….
Instead of passing unpopular bills through questionable methods over the opposition of the people, maybe the President should get behind proposals that can actually sustain popular support.

Okay, fine, let’s say that Obama should ignore the fact that he was elected on a platform to do all these outrageous things that Jay Cost objects to, and go with the polls which make 2010 “likely voters” the arbiters of what he should do right now. What are those “proposals” the president should “get behind” that “can actually sustain popular support?”
Should he, as he has often been urged by Republicans, forget about “irrelevant” issues like health care costs or climate change and focus strictly on the economy? Let’s say he should; what, specifically, can he do that Republicans in Congress won’t fight tooth and nail? Best I can tell, the GOP’s “strategy” for improving the economy is to slash upper-end taxes while eliminating deficits and debts. This cannot, unfortunately, be done without radical reductions in defense spending Republicans do not, by and large, support, or alternatively, big changes in Social Security and Medicare that the public is certain to reject by much bigger margins than health reform or cap-and-trade.
The dirty little secret of Washington right now is that the policies Republicans would follow if they were running things are considerably less popular than those being promoted by Democrats, and as the events of the last year have graphically demonstrated, there is no “half-loaf” compromise approach on major issues that Obama can take that Republicans will accept. So Obama can do what he’s doing, or do nothing. If he’s a “bully” for rejecting complete inaction, then bully for him.

As we await the next step on energy legislation in the Senate, Ezra Klein makes an extremely important if fairly obvious point about the Obama administration’s apparent determination to get something passed even if it doesn’t include a cap-and-trade system or some equivalent carbon pricing mechanism. If the Senate won’t pass such provisions now, it won’t pass them later, either:

There’s nothing magic about [a House-Senate] conference that allows controversial policies that couldn’t pass the Senate the first time around to pass on the second go. The advantage of a conference report is that it can’t be amended, which means you might be able to sneak in some small concessions to the House that aren’t important enough for anyone to sink the whole bill over. But it can be filibustered. So if you add anything major to the bill that would’ve killed it on the pre-conference vote, it’s a good bet that it’ll kill it on the post-conference vote as well.
Carbon pricing almost certainly falls into that category. It’s not a side policy or a bit of pork. It’s the core of a climate bill. If it doesn’t pass in the original Senate bill, that’s because it can’t pass the Senate. Adding it in during conference won’t change that. It’ll just mean the conference report can’t pass the Senate, either. I can’t see any permutation of this in which a conference strategy for carbon pricing makes any sense.

This doesn’t, of course, mean that Congress can’t pass worthwhile energy legislation this year. But it’s not going to magically become a real climate change bill somewhere down the road, particularly with Republicans now monolithically opposing a cap-and-trade approach they once championed.
It’s fine to wheel and deal on legislation, but sometimes the only deal available is one that turns the wheel to an entirely different outcome. That’s probably where things are headed on energy this year.

The ‘liberal Dems vs. Obama’ storyline has been getting a lot of play lately in punditland, likened to the neocon-tea party split in the GOP. But it’s a simplistic interpretation of what’s really going on in the relationship between the President and progressives in the Democratic Party. Katrina vanden Heuval, editor of The Nation, has a more nuanced explanation in her weekly column in the Washington Post:

There’s a tension between the Obama administration and the progressive movement, but it’s not the one mainstream media have been describing or that the White House seems to perceive….What’s happening on the left isn’t the equivalent of the anti-incumbent anger on the right. Most progressives support Obama and want his agenda to succeed…
At the same time, progressives have come to a realization. What we see, some 500 days into the Obama administration, is a president obstructed by a partisan Republican opposition, powerful entrenched corporate interests, and a minority of corrupt or conservative Democrats. The thinking is that if progressives organize independently and forge smart coalitions, building a mass movement for reform with a moral compass that can transcend left-right divisions, we may be able to push Obama beyond the limits of his own politics, overcome the timid incrementalism of the establishment Democratic Party and counter the forces of money and power that are true obstacles to change. As Arianna Huffington has said, “Hope is not enough. . . . We need a ‘Hope 2.0’ that depends not on what President Obama or other politicians say or do but on what we as progressives do.”

Vanden Heuval goes on to describe the white house overreaction to progressive groups’ support of Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s primary opponent and she offers this clarification:

Actually, the point of the exercise was that those opposing Obama’s reform agenda will not get a free pass. And there will be more efforts like it…This agitating role isn’t a new one for the progressive movement. Progressives organized a remarkable mass movement seeking to stop the Iraq war before it began. They built a counterweight in the blogosphere to challenge the mainstream media and the right. They created the coalition that beat Bush on Social Security. They gave Democrats their voice on Iraq, energy and health care that helped to take back Congress. And they inspired a junior senator from Illinois to think that something was moving with such strength that he might run and win the presidency.

This is what real progressives do. It’s not about sniping at the white house or whining about the President being too cautious. It’s about shifting the debate fulcrum leftward to give the President and Democratic leaders courage and room to move forward toward a more progressive agenda. Astute progressives understand that the President has to contend with powerful conservative forces and institutions that come with the job, just as an astute president understands that the job of the progressives in his base is, paraphrasing FDR, to “make me do it.”
As vanden Heuval says, “It doesn’t matter whether you think Obama has done the best that he can or that he has compromised too easily. What’s important is to alter the balance of power. And that means recruiting and mobilizing to unleash new energy into the debate.”
It’s much like the “creative tension” Martin Luther King, Jr. said was needed to break through the obstructionist status quo and energize the Civil Rights Movement. As vanden Heuval concludes,

…Progressives can help Democrats find the voice they need to avoid debilitating losses this fall…by challenging limits of the current debate…to show working Americans that Democrats are fighting for them…The tension between Obama and the progressive movement isn’t a threat to the president. Rather, it may be needed to save him.

A renewed commitment to this understanding will strengthen the Democratic Party, help cut losses in November and set the stage for victory in 2012.

In my preview of the president’s Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil spill, I ran through the many complex points he needed to make, and then sarcastically mentioned that he had twenty whole minutes to make them all.
Well, he didn’t quite use all twenty minutes, and while he made gestures in the direction of the many points he needed to make, he didn’t seal the deal on most of them. Most particularly, he was very vague about the responsibility of conservatives (most notably the Bush/Cheney administration) for encouraging reckless behavior by oil companies like BP; wasn’t very forthcoming about missteps his own administration might have made in the immediate wake of the disaster; and perfunctory about what he was asking Congress to do on climate change legislation.
In other words, it was one of those performances that probably just confirmed preexisting feelings about the president rather than changing any minds or creating any immediate challenges to his enemies. It did serve as a reminder that even on a bad night Barack Obama is ten times more articulate than his predecessor, but that’s a bar too low, just as the bar set for this particular speech was much too high.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Are the basic premises of our current policy in Afghanistan fatally flawed?
The fact that I feel compelled to pose this question so soon after the completion of President Obama’s painstaking review reflects the mounting evidence that the results of that policy have fallen far short of expectations.
Let’s begin at the beginning, with Marja. The holy trinity of modern counterinsurgency is clear, hold, and build. Coalition forces are stalled at step one. After the initial military thrust, many Taliban fighters, including mid-level commanders, swooped back in to the area to intimidate local inhabitants who might otherwise be inclined to cooperate with the coalition and Afghan government. Many other Afghanis sympathize with the core Taliban message that we intend to occupy their country for the long-term with the aim of imposing alien cultural, religious, and political values. It is hard to see what will tip this stalemate in our favor, even harder to see how we can hand over governance and security function to the Afghans in Marja any time soon. Brigadier General Frederick Hodges, one of the leading commanders in southern Afghanistan, puts it this way: “You’ve got to have the governance part ready to go. We talked about doing that in Marja but didn’t realize how hard it was to do. Ultimately, it’s up to the Afghans to step forward.” It’s clear that Hodges is not holding his breath.
The next shoe to drop was Kandahar. Ever since this Taliban stronghold was identified as a key target, the tension between the U.S. and Afghan governments on this issue has been palpable–so much so that the coalition is now hesitant to call what it has in mind an “offensive.” Just last week, we learned that the operation scheduled to begin in the spring would fall even farther behind schedule. As The New York Times reports, “The Afghan government has not produced the civilian leadership and trained security forces it was to contribute to the effort, U.S. officials said, and the support from Kandaharis that the United States was counting on Karzai to deliver has not materialized.” Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, has been admirably frank about a core difficulty: the residents of Kandahar are far from sure that they want the protection we claim to be offering them.
On to Kabul, where President Karzai has reportedly lost faith in the coalition’s ability (and that of his own government) to defeat the Taliban and is secretly maneuvering to strike a separate deal with them. If these reports are correct–and Susan Rice, our UN ambassador, disputed them on Sunday (though, notably, she offered no new evidence in support of her assertion that Karzai remains a committed partner)–two events appear to be fueling his growing disenchantment: senior American officials’ claims that his reelection lacked legitimacy, and President Obama’s December announcement that he intended to begin reducing the number of American troops by July 2011.
One might be tempted to chalk up the extent of our difficulties in Afghanistan to tendentious reporting. I was skeptical myself–that is, until I stumbled across a stunning NATO/ISAF report completed in March. This report summarizes the results of an in-depth survey conducted in nine of the 16 districts in Kandahar Province to which researchers could safely gain access. Here are some of the findings:
· Security is viewed everywhere as a major problem. When asked to name the top dangers experienced while traveling on the roads, far more respondents named Afghan National Army and Police checkpoints than roadside bombs, Taliban checkpoints, or criminals. And the Taliban were rated better than ISAF convoys and checkpoints as well.
· Corruption is viewed as a widespread problem and is experienced by respondents on a regular basis. In fact, 84 percent say that corruption is the main reason for the current conflict. Corruption erodes confidence in the Afghan government, and fully two-thirds of respondents believe that this corruption forces them to seek alternatives to government services and authority. Chillingly, 53 percent regard the Taliban as “incorruptible.”
· The residents of Kandahar overwhelmingly prefer a process of reconciliation to the prospect of continued conflict. Ninety-four percent say that it is better to negotiate with the Taliban than to fight with them, and they see grounds for believing that these negotiations will succeed. Eighty-five percent regard the Taliban as “our Afghan brothers” (a phrase President Karzai repeated word for word in his address to the recent jirga), and 81 percent say that the Taliban would lay down their arms if given jobs.
Our military commanders in Afghanistan talk incessantly about the need to “shape” the political context in a given area before beginning activities with a significant military component–but if their own research is correct, our chances of “shaping” Kandahar any time soon range from slim to none. Based on General McChrystal’s own logic, then, we cannot proceed there because a key requirement for success is not fulfilled. And if we can’t prevail in Kandahar, then we’re stuck with the Taliban as a long-term military presence and political force in Afghanistan.
And finally, on to Pakistan. Despite skeptical reports from our own intelligence services, U.S. government officials have taken recently to praising the authorities in Islamabad for their stepped-up cooperation in the fight against the Taliban. But a report from the London School of Economics made public over the past weekend questions the basis for this optimism. Based on interviews with nine current Taliban field commanders and ten former senior Taliban officials as well as dozens of Afghan leaders, the report argues that relations between the Taliban and the Pakistani intelligence (the ISI) are dense and ongoing. One senior southern Taliban leader said: “Every group commander knows the reality–which is obvious to all of us–that the ISI is behind the Taliban, they formed and are supporting the Taliban. … Everyone sees the sun in the sky but cannot say it is the sun.”
Worse, the report offers credible though not conclusive evidence that Pakistani President Zadari has been personally involved in the release of numerous Taliban prisoners from Pakistani jails, reportedly telling them that they had been arrested only because of American pressure. Surveying the evidence, Matt Waldman, the report’s author, concludes that “Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude” and that “without a change in Pakistani behaviour it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency.”

Read more…

It’s one thing to read the many polls showing Republicans with an advantage in the so-called “generic congressional ballot.” It’s another thing altogether to see that advantage reflected in data on specific congressional districts. That’s why the new NPR Battleground survey, jointly conducted by the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies, is worth a worried look by Democrats.
This poll, as its name suggests, focuses on marginal House districts. Given the two consecutive pro-Democratic “wave” elections of 2006 and 2008, it’s not surprising that 60 of these 70 districts are currently held by Democrats. But as a group they are Republican-leaning (the likely voters polled overall gave a plurality to John McCain in 2008), in part because of their basic nature and in part because of a notable “enthusiasm gap” between voters of the two parties.
In any event, Republicans currently hold a 49-41 advantage in the “battleground” districts overall, and more alarmingly, a 47-42 advantage in the Democratic-held districts. Moreover, President Obama’s approval-disapproval ratio in the battleground districts is a terrible 40-54.
The “enthusiasm gap” strongly reinforces an already-strong upward skewing of the age demographics of likely voters. 38% of the respondents to this poll are over 60; only 9% are under 30.
Greenberg expressed hopes that this poll will convince Democrats from the White House on down to articulate a forward-looking economicthat sharply contrasts their values with those of Republicans:

“What I’m hoping that this poll brings about is that the Democrats are running with a much more effective economic message, which talks about who they fought for, and what they are engaged in now,” Greenberg said. “And that may also come out of the president’s speech this week, where I think as well he will be talking about not so much a grade for past performance but what he intends to do on energy and the Gulf.”

Developing and articulating that message won’t be easy. The NPR survey shows Republican messages on federal spending, the stimulus package, “bailouts,” and even financial regulation, as attracting majority support in the battleground districts.
It’s time to get deadly serious about giving potential Democratic voters good reasons to turn out and vote Democratic this November.