This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
This week, Tim Pawlenty formally launched an exploratory committee to run for president. His path to the GOP’s 2012 nomination is reasonably clear: He will try to become everybody’s second choice in a field full of deeply flawed candidates, and there’s a fairly convincing case that he’ll succeed. Strikingly, though, this case for T-Paw in 2012 is essentially the same as the case that was made for Pawlenty as John McCain’s running-mate in 2008. He was a pleasant guy from a battleground region of the country, with a successful state-level political career, who didn’t offend any of the major veto-wielding factions within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. He also had a suitably all-American biography and once devised a slogan–“Sam’s Club Republicans”–that nicely reflects what Republicans like to think about themselves.
But it’s also useful to remember why John McCain did not in fact put the Minnesotan on his ticket: When it came down to a choice between Pawlenty and an obscure Alaskan named Sarah Palin, it was obvious that Pawlenty didn’t move the needle in terms of the GOP’s prospects for victory. “Pawlenty was credible and acceptable, but once the convention was over he would disappear,” thought McCain’s advisers, according to one insider account. Palin, on the other hand, was the “high risk, high reward” candidate, who would energize the GOP base. You see which one got the nod.
Of course, the situation was different from today. McCain was trailing in the polls when he made that decision, and choosing Pawlenty as a running-mate would be a very different calculation from choosing him as a presidential nominee. Yet there are nevertheless some lessons to be drawn from McCain’s choice, which highlight Pawlenty’s weaknesses as a candidate: Yes, his ability to appeal to all factions within the conservative movement might help Pawlenty in the “invisible primary,” where party elites attempt to set the field and tip the scales for their favorites. These elites seem to be hoping that if they choose someone who appeals to all sides, and cuts a profile as close to “generic” GOP candidate as possible, they will have a winning hand next year. But are the conservative activists who actually dominate primary and caucus events really in the mood for a safe, unexciting choice? Or are Tea Partiers in the mood for a crusade, led by someone who can energize them as Palin was meant to do in 2008? Will a political movement that perceives itself as “taking the country back” from socialists and baby-killers really find its general in a man so unremarkable that he was described in a sympathetic home-state magazine profile as “The Cipher”?
This problem goes deeper than the usual questions about Pawlenty’s “charisma.” He is, by most accounts, a personable guy who can connect well with all sorts of people, a quality that will serve him well in one-on-one retail campaigning. But the real issue is whether he is “big” enough for the role of the next Ronald Reagan–is he a redemptive figure who seems like he can lead this most exceptional country back onto the path of righteousness? This is an unusual requirement, but to conservative primary voters, who are long aggrieved by what they perceive as endless betrayals at the hands of Republican politicians, it is an essential quality that Pawlenty hasn’t definitely shown he possesses.
You get the sense that Pawlenty and his handlers understand this problem, and are working on it in ways that may or may not succeed. His recent habit of shouting his way through speeches (as wonderfully explained by Jesse Zwick for TNR) appears to be in part motivated by the need to show activists that he is “one of us,” and as outraged by the ongoing destruction of America from within as anyone. And then there are his amazing Web ads–part Transformers, part Triumph of the Will–which are designed to convey the sense that Pawlenty’s campaign is part of a gripping national drama comparable to the country’s other great turning points. These ads have become hilarious fodder for Stephen Colbert:

But they have the very serious goal of elevating Pawlenty from the non-offensive “safe choice” of party insiders into a sort of Maximum Leader for whom conservatives will snake-dance to the polls next year in order to vindicate their long-frustrated ambitions.
This gambit, handled as it is now, exposes Pawlenty not only to liberal ridicule, but to the risk that he will be perceived in the end as a Wizard of Oz–a nebbish pretending to be a world-historical figure via the use of smoke and mirrors and amplification. Yes, in theory, he could win the nomination much as McCain did, through a demolition derby that incrementally eliminates his opponents. But it’s clear that he still has a lot of very tricky rebranding to do–and for your typical Iowa Caucus-goer, conscious of his or her responsibility to choose or reject candidates, and yearning now more than ever for a leader who is larger than life, T-Paw’s modest “generic” charms may simply not be enough.

Politicians change their minds about things all the time, for good and bad reasons. But just this last week we’ve witnessed a couple of the most amazing 180 degree turns in recent memory, from two guys who want to become president.
In terms of political impact, the biggie was probably Mitt Romney’s latest effort to deal with the albatross of his Massachusetts health reform plan, with its undeniable organic connection to ObamaCare. Now he’s become the maximum supporter of total state control of health care policy, saying he’d grant 50 state waivers to the Affordable Care Act the day he took office.
Trouble is, as Greg Sargent pointed out yesterday, Romney’s on record touting his health reform plan, and specifically the individual mandate that’s made it toxic to conservatives, as a model for national health care reform. Apparently not so much now.
The irony here is that Romney is flopping around like a fish in a net to avoid the one really big flip-flop that’s probably the only thing that could ultimately save his presidential candidacy: a flat-out, I-was-wrong repudiation of the Massachusetts health plan.
Meanwhile, in a more blatant action, Newt Gingrich went almost overnight from screaming at Obama for failing to intervene in Libya on humanitarian grounds to screaming at Obama for taking his advice. Slate‘s Dave Weigel, a conservative-watcher who is not at all naive, called the reversal “breathtaking.” Well, that’s one word for it.

Two observations in the blogosphere caught my eye today as reflecting insights that are pretty obvious once you read them, but not so obvious that you hear them a lot.
The first, by Paul Waldman at TAP, is a meditation on the familiar quandry of progressives about how to deal with the venom and unreasonableness of the contemporary Right:

The venom can itself lead one to conclude that those with whom we disagree are beyond help and reason. But that doesn’t offer proof that one should get meaner in response. It’s possible to believe that one’s opponents are a horrifying band of moral monsters and simultaneously believe that calling them that out loud and refusing ever to compromise with them doesn’t do your side much good. There’s little evidence that the nastiest line or the most unrestrained questioning of motives produces more political victories. And no matter how much you hate the other side, they aren’t going anywhere.

Nope. You can only try to beat them and then hope they get a grip.
Meanwhile, at TNR, James Downie addresses a question much on my mind as a non-foreign-policy specialist trying to keep up with current events:

[W]hy should bloggers have to take positions, especially on issues as complicated as foreign interventions? Why can’t one offer opinions and observations without taking positions? Surely one can opine, for example, that the Arab League’s growing dissatisfaction with the no fly zone hurts the intervention whether or not he or she supported, or opposed, or supported then but now opposes, or is unsure about the intervention. Similarly, I can comment on the race for the GOP nomination without ever taking a position on any of the candidates.
No, bloggers do not have to take positions. There is no law or principle that requires writers to say, no matter how much or how little expertise they have, “This is what should be done. This is the right thing to do.” One could argue, perhaps, that taking no position is a position in itself, but then “no position,” “I don’t know what to do,” and “I am not too sure” are positions all too rarely taken.

I realize this site is devoted to helping Democrats think through strategic issues, and the question of whether they have a moral responsibility to oppose a military intervention carried out by a Democratic president is clearly worth asking. But as to the answer, “I am not sure,” in part because it’s so difficult to discern how the intervention is actually working out, and I am generally loath to add my own voice to the vast and perpetual chorus of the president’s critics without certainty.

The American Prospect‘s Paul Waldman has done us all a great favor by reading and interpreting the latest batch of “campaign books” from prospective 2012 presidential candidates, including Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty. And after duly noting the relatively low political value of such books, and the low standards governing the genre, he offers some key insights about what they reveal about the Republican zeitgeist of the moment:

Despite their surface differences, the books raise some common questions. How do we answer key policy questions? How important is God to our politics? Is Barack Obama merely wrong about everything, or is he actively attempting to destroy our country? Just how great is America?
Actually, that last question is something the candidates all agree on: America is stupendously great, awesomely great, so great that “great” doesn’t begin to describe its greatness — and Obama just doesn’t get it.

Aside from a peculiar emphasis on “American exceptionalism” that appears to exempt this country not only from healthy self-doubt but from ordinary logic and the lessons of human history, notes Waldman, the books are dominated by an equally unreflexive attitude towards the 44th president, who is always wrong:

In their attempts to understand Obama, the candidates again and again reach the conclusion that when Obama does or says something they like, he’s either shrewdly hiding his real intentions or has been cornered by political reality. When he does or says something they don’t like, he has revealed his true self. So Romney can claim, without any supporting evidence, that “another of President Obama’s presuppositions is that America is in a state of inevitable decline,” just as Palin avers that Obama “seems to see nothing admirable in the American experience.” How do they know this? Well, they just do. None of the candidates provides any quotations in which Obama apologizes for America because he never actually has. And don’t bother bringing up the hundreds of speeches in which Obama has lavished praise on this country, because as Romney says, “President Obama is far too gifted a politician to say in plain words that America is merely one nation among many.” However, if we take some things Obama has said out of context and make a series of absurd leaps in logic to arrive at the worst possible interpretation of them, then we will learn the truth.

America is great, and Obama wants to destroy it. That’s the overriding theme of proto-candidates working in the most expansive format they’ll ever use.
As it happens, I was involved as a “ghost” in a “campaign book” for a candidate running against an incumbent president in 2004, and I can tell you that George W. Bush’s sins and shortcomings were in the background, not the forefront, of the policy-heavy tome. And while the book was full of invocations of America’s greatness, they were deployed not to congratulate Americans for their superior virtue, but to encourage them to meet common challenges, most of which have yet, seven years later, to be seriously addressed.
It’s an open question as to whether GOP presidential candidates can make it all the way through the nomination process–and for the winner, all the way to November of 2012–on a message that essentially tells Americans there is nothing wrong with their society that firing Barack Obama can’t fix. I guess if you get all your information from Fox News, that’s a credible argument. But for everyone else, a positive agenda that goes beyond telling a suffering nation and world that they need to shut up and salute the flag (and oh yes, cut taxes and regulations allegedly afflicting their economic masters, from whom all good things come) might prove necessary.

Near the end of Karen Tumulty’s solid assessment of Haley Barbour’s likely presidential campaign for the Washington Post appears this very interesting passage:

Race — and presumptions about how he feels about it — rattle the normally unflappable Barbour as few other things do.
“The only people who ever asked me about it are reporters,” he said, bristling when asked about it yet again in the interview.
But he and his team know that race is one issue he can’t dodge, and that is why Barbour — just as Obama did during his presidential campaign — is considering giving a major speech on the subject. The likely venue: a 50th anniversary reunion of the Freedom Riders, set for late May in Jackson.

A “major speech” by Haley Barbour on race? A speech guaranteed to be compared to Obama’s 2008 “race speech”? What on earth would that sound like? A purely for-the-record denunciation of Jim Crow? A defiant neo-Rebel shout that the only racism worth mentioning these days is prejudice against southern white Christians? A paean to color-blindedness (e.g., an attack on affirmative action)?
And how would the Freedom Ride alumni feel about serving as props in a Haley Barbour sanitizing effort?
This could be very interesting.
UPDATE: A friend of mine emailed to ask: “Wonder if he’ll do a ‘lobbying speech’ as well.” If so, he might as well turn it into a “tobacco speech” while he’s at it.

With all the skirmishing over non-defense discretionary spending in the fight over FY 2011 appropriations, it’s easy to forget the bigger budgetary picture that will soon get attention if and when House Republicans release their own long-term budget document in the context of next year’s budget resolution.
For all sorts of fairly obvious reasons, Republicans desperately want Obama to agree at least in principle to reduce future spending on Social Security and Medicare before they formally move in this direction, which their own budgetary arithmetic makes absolutely necessary. GOPers certainly don’t want to make their House members vote for a budget resolution that includes such political risks as partial privatization of Social Security and voucherization of Medicare without bipartisan “cover,” exposing them to sustained attacks from Democrats going into the 2012 elections.
And while Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, has been perfectly willing to hint very generally at potential support for “entitlement reform” to reduce long-range deficit and debt projections, he’s not about to go further unless Republicans abandon their theological opposition to higher revenues (an important part of “Social Security reform” in and of itself, aside from their importance in moving the budget towards balance).
Now a few Republicans–notably Sen. Tom Coburn–have expressed a willingness to consider more revenues if they don’t involve higher general tax rates, as part of a larger deal that includes “entitlement reform.” That was the proposition laid out by last year’s deficit commission report, which Coburn endorsed even as the House Republican commission members voted “no.” And the idea of some sort of “base-broadening” revenue measures that keep or even reduce current tax rates is probably the basis of the support of 32 Republican senators for the bipartisan letter to Obama urging him to lead deficit reduction negotiations that’s in the news this week.
As TPM’s Brian Beutler explains, there are genuine divisions in the White House (and undoubtedly among congressional Democrats as well) about when if ever Obama should be willing to play his big budget chip of contemplating significant changes in Social Security and/or Medicare. But there’s no disagreement at all that Republicans are going to have to offer a lot more than they’ve been willing to offer up until now on the revenue side, and perhaps in the parallel discussions of appropriations. Here’s Beutler on what either the House GOP budget proposal or any bipartisan Senate budget proposal would have to involve:

[I]f their efforts are serious, Obama’s economic team sees an opening — to take pressure off the non-defense discretionary portion of the budget, and to send a signal to markets that the U.S. government isn’t so paralyzed that it can’t address larger, looming fiscal challenges.
So what constitutes a serious effort? Basically a recognition that Social Security revenues and general revenues have to rise, if the administration is going to accept anything that cuts benefits, even modestly.

Despite the fears of many progressives that Democrats will once again “cave,” there appears to be no serious risk that Obama will move on entitlements until Republicans have already moved on revenues. If they don’t, then GOPers will face the painful choice of moving forward on entitlements on their own, or giving up on their much-boasted deficit reduction efforts. With the public generally favoring tax increases on the wealthy as part of an overall deficit reduction package, even as Tea Party folk demand deep entitlement cuts and oppose revenue measures, Republicans will not be in a very good position.
All of these conflicts will play out, of course, in the context of a short-term crisis over appropriations and the debt limit, so GOPers will not have much time to weigh options or influence public opinion, either within their own ranks or with the public at large. So we really are likely to see some high-stakes poker playing during the next two or three weeks.

One of the most effective talking-points of the unions and Democratic legislators battling Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin was: “It’s Not About the Money!” This battle-cry drew attention to the fact that Walker’s union-busting agenda had little or nothing to do with the state’s fiscal crisis, which Walker himself had helped engineer by pushing corporate tax cuts.
It’s time to make the same point in terms of the Republican agenda in Congress. Much of the battle between Ds and Rs over non-defense discretionary spending isn’t about the deficit numbers, but about GOP efforts to grind various ideological axes, from defunding EPA and bank regulators and NPR, to crippling abortion and contraceptive services, to repealing last year’s health reform legislation. Indeed, appropriations “riders” that have nothing to do with spending levels are what conservative House members are most adamently demanding in return for supporting any appropriations bill, temporary or permanent. In effect, alarms about debts and deficits are being used as an excuse to go after government functions that Republicans would object to even if the budget was in surplus.
Now on one level this isn’t surprising or even wrong-minded; the two parties can and should reflect their own sense of priorities in every budget decision, not just those driven by concerns or negotiations over spending reductions. But these priorities need to be acknowledged and discussed openly and directly, and not in the disguise of making “painful but necessary cuts.”
The truth is that most Republican these days would prefer to live in a country with little or no regulation of corporations (environmental or any other sort) or banks, a far more regressive tax code than has been the case historically, workplaces with no collective bargaining rights or even minimum wages, a status quo ante health care system in which private insurers are free to discriminate and rising costs are borne by the sickest and poorer Americans, the social safety net is weaker and not subject to any national minimum norms, and abortion (plus many forms of contraception) are illegal. They’d also prefer to get rid of legal protections against discrimination generally, and a federal government limited to the kind of functions typical of the eighteenth century in which the U.S. Constitution was adopted.
It’s their right to favor this kind of society, but given the abundant evidence that a large majority of Americans would be very unhappy with it, it’s the responsibility of non-Republicans and of the news media to make this agenda as clear as possible, and not just mindlessly accept that conservatives are only worried about the debt burden on future generations.
I made a small effort to do this on a nationally syndicated public radio show today, and am resolved to keep it up at the risk of redundancy. So should you.