I’m going to be celebrating Christmas tomorrow, so TDS will take a short break until Friday. But check back then and next week; we’ll be offering some concluding thoughts on this remarkable year.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

If you don’t mind a holiday meditation on a big question that’s been central to widely varying predictions about Barack Obama’s presidency, here goes:
Many of the remaining doubts about his approach to the presidential office can be summed up in one word followed by a question mark: bipartisanship?
From his emergence onto the national political scene in 2004 throughout the long 2008 campaign, Obama has consistently linked a quite progressive agenda and voting record to a rhetoric thoroughly marbled with calls for national unity, “common purpose,” a “different kind of politics,” and scorn for the partisanship, gridlock and polarization of recent decades. Call it “bipartisanship,” “nonpartisanship,” or “post-partisanship,” this strain of Obama’s thinking is impossible to ignore, and has pleased and inspired some listeners while annoying and alarming others.
The weeks since Obama’s electoral victory have not resolved doubts and confusion on this subject. He’s worked closely with the outgoing Bush administration on emergency financial plans, appointed two Republicans to his Cabinet, and called repeatedly for overcoming the divisions of the election campaign—while simultaneously outlining the most ambitious progressive agenda since LBJ’s Great Society. He’s won applause from the Washington punditocracy for his “pragmatism” and “centrism”—even as leading Republicans blamed excessive moderation and complicity in activist government for their defeats in the last two elections.
Among self-conscious progressives and conservatives alike, there’s a prevailing belief that Obama’s “bipartisan” talk is largely a tactical device without real meaning—and a lingering fear that he might really mean it.
But suffusing these hopes and fears is a concept of “bipartisanship” that arguably has little to do with Obama’s: Democrats and Republicans in Washington, with their aligned lobbyists and interest groups looking over their shoulders, getting together behind closed doors and “cutting deals.” It’s the bipartisanship of legendary congressional sausage makers like Bob Dole or John Breaux who “get things done” by compromising principles and allocating influence according to Washington’s peculiar and semi-corrupt power dynamics. At its best, it’s the shabbily genteel Village Elders elitism that progressives call High Broderism. At its worst, it produces legislative abominations like virtually every big tax, energy or farm bill enacted in recent memory.
Is this what the anti-Washington change agent Barack Obama has in mind? And if not, what is he talking about, and shouldn’t he stop?
I’d suggest we suspend the iron belief that bipartisanship and bringing progressive change to Washington are contradictory goals, and take Obama’s own rhetoric a bit more seriously.

Read more…

I’m a big fan of Chris Bowers, and am sympathetic to the goals of the OpenLeft site, which seeks greater ideological clarity (and accountability) within the Democratic Party. But his latest effort–building on another OpenLeft post by Matt Stoller–to conduct an ideological assessment of the Obama Cabinet by way of connections, direct or indirect, with the Democratic Leadership Council, is, I believe, something of a waste of time.
As a former DLC policy director for quite a few years, I can speak with some authority in saying that the Democratic elected officials who have been involved in that organization are an ideologically diverse bunch; conversely, there are Democrats with no history of involvement in the DLC who probably agree with Al From or Bruce Reed more often than not. It’s not a membership group; it has no membership cards or creeds anyone has to swear to; and particularly at the state level, which is the DLC’s center-of-gravity these days, people participate because it’s an ideas-oriented center-left group that takes state and local government issues seriously.
More importantly, the factional stereotypes of this or that grouping of Democrats formed in the 1990s or even in 2004 are increasingly misleading and/or irrelevant. Is “DLCer” Tom Daschle really antagonistic to an aggressive push for universal health care? Will “non-DLCer” Eric Holder pursue an agenda at the Justice Department that’s different from what “DLCers” Artur Davis or Tim Kaine would have pursued as AG? Is “non-DLCer” Steven Chu distinguishable on energy policy from DLCers–or the DLC itself–on the need for a radical reorientation to deal with climate change? And are there any signs that the “DLCers” on Obama’s economic team have any less sense of urgency about the need for a big, public-sector-investment-oriented stimulus package than the “non-DLCers” with whom they are closely working?
I think the obvious answers to these questions are negative. And the fact that the notably “non-DLC” politician Barack Obama has chosen a goodly number of “DLCers” for his administration is less an indication of ideological heresy than of the impressive convergence and (at least temporary) unity of the Democratic Party.
Intra-Democratic factions may reemerge, later if not sooner, and again, I don’t blame Chris or Matt for trying to get a grip on the ideological character of the Obama administration. But there’s no telling whether the factions of the future will be congruent with those of the past. Given the current circumstances, it’s not a bad idea to begin with the assumption that Team Obama will reflect the common values and priorities of all “progressives” and “centrists,” and bend us all to the urgent tasks at hand on which we generally do agree.

In the brouhaha over Rick Warren’s role at Barack Obama’s inauguration, unhappy progressives have not always appreciated the extent to which Warren’s fellow fundamentalist evangelicals are just as unhappy as they are about this development.
And that raises the question whether, from a purely tactical point of view, Warren’s presence at the inauguration could represent or at least create the potential of a split in the Religious Right.
This is an argument that the much-esteemed Alan Wolfe offers at The New Republic today. Indeed, Wolfe goes on to suggest that Warren’s decision to bless Obama’s presidency could help promote a more general relaxation of the political and cultural self-marginalization of conservative evangelicals that might usher in a more tolerant posture on all sorts of issues:

Warren’s decision to accept an invitation from a liberal president is as clear a symbol of the entry of evangelicals into mainstream culture as one can imagine. In the conservative Christian subculture, liberals are treated with scorn. In the real world, they control the White House and Congress. How many evangelical preachers will be able to demonize Obama once Mr. Evangelical himself has blessed him?

Wolfe goes on to argue that evangelicals like Warren and Richard Cizik may represent a more centrist wave of the future among conservative evangelicals, who might ultimately accept gay marriage, though probably not legalized abortion.
The problem with this argument, as Wolfe himself acknolwedges, is that on the cultural issues that most divide progressives from the Christian Right, Warren is no “centrist.” He is a fundamentalist evangelical who believes the literal language of the Bible is definitively and unchangingly normative on all issues of morality. Accordingly, he thinks of gay relationships as morally akin to incest or sexual abuse. And he thinks abortion, any abortion, is homicide, making legalized abortion a “holocaust.”
Warren’s critics from the Christian Right quite naturally believe that in invoking God’s blessings on a “liberal” administration, he is consorting with sexual predators and, well, the contemporary equivalents of the Nazis. And not surprisingly, many of Obama’s progressive critics on the subject of Warren think it’s a bridge too far to exhibit fellowship with people who appear to think that they are predators and Nazis.
I’m not casually throwing around words like “Nazis,” by the way. This is the natural consequence of believing, as most conservative evangelicals leaders, including Rick Warren, say they believe, that each and every abortion (according to a very expansive idea of abortion as meaning any destruction of a zygote from the moment of conception) is morally indistinguishable from herding Jews into death camps. When the Tom Cruise vehicle Valkyrie comes out in a few days, a lot of movegoers will be asking themselves if they would have killed Hitler given the opportunity, with most answering in the affirmative. For all their quite sincere protestations against violence, I am sure that a fair number of people who agree with Rick Warren on the “fundamentals” have privately wondered what they’d do if it could save millions more of the unborn from the extermination clinics abetted by a liberal government. Given their assumptions, it would be amazingly weak and lazy of them not to think about that on occasion.
Since even Alan Wolfe says he doubts that conservative evangelicals will ever “moderate” on the subject of abortion, it’s a very good question whether there can ever be genuine comity and fellowship between those who view abortion as homicide and those who view it as the exercise of a fundamental right. And that’s before you even get to the issue of LGBT rights, which folks like Warren quite logically consider at the very best an evil–a defiance of God’s law and the order of the universe–to be tolerated only when necessary.
So if that’s all true, it’s reasonable to ask what both Obama and Warren are up to in their by-now-routine habit of cooperation.
Warren’s motivation seems to be to reestablish the political independence of conservative evangelicals. Best I can tell, he dislikes the “marriage” between his religious flock and the secular-conservative GOP because (a) he is a more thoroughgoing fundamentalist than others, and takes seriously biblical injunctions like “creation care” and anti-poverty efforts, along with the usual social-conservative agenda, and (b) he thinks the Christian Right hasn’t gotten much from its relationship with the GOP, and needs to regain some leverage.
If Alan Wolfe is right, and Obama is trying to split the conservative coalition, and perhaps tempt its membership into a more moderate position, then both Warren and Obama have very similar motives: cooperating with the enemy of their enemy for purely tactical purposes.
That’s important to understand. Maybe Barack Obama is the United States of the 1970s, Rick Warren is Red China, and James Dobson is the Soviet Union. Obama and Warren have lots of reasons to make nice with each other, with an eye towards the maddening effect it’s having on Dobson. But let’s don’t confuse this with some real convergence of views, actual or probably even potential. Obama’s and Warren’s views on some very fundamental aspects of moral and political life are irreconcilable. They are seeking to use each other. And that, not some imaginary surrender by either man to the other’s position on abortion or gay marriage or anything else, is what we need to consider in assessing Warren’s presence on the inaugural podium.

It is apparently incumbent on every blogger to express an opinion on the possible appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton. I guess this is a byproduct of Gothamcentricity: no other place in America has several thousand people who consider themselves preeminently qualified to serve in the U.S. Senate, and many thousands more people who want to write about it. Indeed, the two categories probably overlap.
Having only dipped my toe in the sea of ink that has been spilled on this subject, I can only guess that someone by now (on the mathematical principle that a thousand monkeys with typewriters will eventually write Hamlet) has noted that the last time there was this much caterwauling about an unqualified Senate aspirant, his name was Edward Kennedy, in 1962. Caroline’s Uncle Ted, of course, has gone on to earn virtually universal regard as one of the greatest Senators ever.
That’s not to say that we should assume Ted’s niece has similar virtues; America has had sufficiently mixed experience with Kennedys in office to avoid any preconclusions.
The salient point most often made by Ms. Kennedy’s defenders is that there have been lots of people in politics who started on third base thanks to their name, their (non-political) fame, or their money. This last point is worth dwelling on: the very rich are frequently run for high office because their dough is a tangible political asset that would otherwise have to be rustled up from somewhere else. And if we’ve learned anything over the last few months, wealth, even “self-earned,” is hardly an infallible indicator of competence or wisdom.
Ross Douthat probably offers the best case for the peculiar offensiveness of CK’s candidacy:

I can live with legacy politicians, underqualified appointees, and entitled rich people. I just think the Senate can do without an rich, underqualified legacy appointee whose press coverage would lead you to believe that she’s a cross between Florence Nightingale, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Princess Diana and Princess Leia.

But it’s easy to get carried away with that sort of stuff; if Caroline Kennedy’s resume isn’t overwhelming, it’s not as though she’s a exactly a political Paris Hilton who is simply famous for being famous.
I am sure that Governor Paterson and New York Democrats could come up with another Senator who is better qualified, capable of raising big sacks of cash (from their own assets or from others), and a lead-pipe cinch to beat anybody the GOP is likely to put up. But let’s not get too self-righteous about high political office as a meritocracy. Americans love their celebrities, and their weaknesses (viz. Celebrity Rehab) and their strengths, and that’s not changing anytime soon. Many years ago I used to joke that maybe we should just re-establish a monarchy and turn it over to the Kennedys, or alternate it between the Kennedys and the Buckleys, freeing electoral politics of the craving for family glamor and drama. Until we’re ready for something like that, I don’t quite know by what higher law we can bar Caroline Kennedy from office, unless she really does represent some sort of Celebrity Culture tipping point.

Paul Weyrich, the legendary conservative institution-builder and avatar of what was once, in his heydey, called the New Right, died yesterday after a long illness.
I’m not the one to assess Weyrich’s career, and thus recommend Marc Ambider’s brisk summary of his triumphs back in the day and his long, ornery decline.
I can offer one personal anecdote that offers some insight into the man’s personality. One of his less-successful projects was a cable network, National Empowerment Television (later America’s Voice), that represented something of an earnestly amateurish dry run for Fox News. Virtually all the shows on NET featured call-ins, and viewers were about as rabidly conservative as you can get. I once appeared as a Token Democrat on Weyrich’s own show, back when I’d accept just about any media opportunity this side of the Sunrise Farm Report. The first caller made a snarky remark about my (then) long hair, and Weyrich proceeded to use much of the balance of the show lecturing his viewers about civility.
That was fairly typical of the man. He spent a good part of his long career appealing to and often speaking for extremists, but he didn’t much like his “friends” any more than his enemies. He was undoubtedly one of the Founding Fathers of the Cultural Right; he reportedly is the one who suggested the monniker “Moral Majority” to Jerry Falwell for his first-generation Christian Right group. But in every personal respect, Weyrich was wildly different from the slick, weasily hacks like Ralph Reed and Tony Perkins who eventually displaced him as the public faces of his own movement.
Paul Weyrich didn’t have a phony bone in his body. And though he very productively served causes I abhor for many decades, I have to say that his old-school style, which he pursued to the point of self-marginalizing eccentricity, is a trait that tradition-honoring conservatives ought to respect and miss every time they turn on Fox to watch and hear the automatons drone.

I think it’s safe to say that no decision by Barack Obama since his vote for FISA legislation much earlier this year has aroused as much authentic anger among progressives as his invitation to evangelical superstar Rick Warren to provide the invocation at his inauguration next month.
Some of the backlash over Warren reflects broad-based concerns that Obama’s style of religious outreach has, well, overreached by embracing a religious leader who considers homosexuality a sin, evolution a hoax, legalized abortion a holocaust, and “evildoers” like the elected president of Iran a target for a righteous assassination. Sarah Posner has articulated these concerns in a typically thorough piece at The Nation:

Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats’ religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful. Obama’s religious outreach was intended, supposedly, to make religious voters more comfortable with him and feel included in the Democratic Party. But that outreach now has come at the expense of other people’s comfort and inclusion, at an event meant to mark a turning point away from divisive politics.

Damon Linker, known mainly for his aggressive and informed criticism of the Religious Right, offers publicly what I’ve privately heard a fair number of Democrats say in defense or dismissal of the Warren choice:

Obama’s a politician, and the Warren pick is just the latest sign that he’s an exceedingly shrewd one (as Andrew concedes). Warren is beloved by mainstream evangelicals, who have helped him to sell millions of books extolling a fairly anodyne form of American Protestantism. (Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell he is not.) It is in Obama’s interest (and the Democrats’) to peel as many moderate evangelicals away from the GOP as he can. Giving Warren such a prominent (but purely symbolic) place in the inauguration is a politically cost-free way of furthering this partisan agenda.

As Linker’s post indicates, part of the disagreement over this issue reflects deeper disagreements on several points. What is the symbolic value, positive or negative, of Warren’s role in the inauguration? What is the source and significance of Warren’s cult-like celebrity? Is he, as Posner calls him, a “culture warrior wolf” in “sheep’s clothing,” or, as Linker suggests, a purveyor of Oprah-style lifestyle advice that can be separated from his deeper theological and political positions? And who is legitimizing whom here? Is Warren blessing Obama’s progressive agenda, or is Obama blessing Warren’s reactionary views?
All these are legitimate arguments to have, this day or any day, but there’s not much question that what makes this dispute red-hot at present is Warren’s visible role, as a California-based megapreacher, in support of California’s Proposition 8 outlawing gay marriage.
It is abundantly clear that LGBT activists view the passage of Prop 8 as representing the dark underside of what is generally being treated by progressives as a Jubilee event on November 4. That it happened in a state that Barack Obama carried by a huge margin is especially troubling, and is understandably being interpreted as a sign that LGBT folk are being excluded from the Obama coalition. No one should be surprised that Obama’s decision to give an avid Prop 8 supporter a central role in his inauguration–offering, in fact, the blessings of Almighty God to the new presidency–would feel like salt poured into fresh wounds.
But the backlash to the Warren designation illustrates something else about Prop 8 that hasn’t gotten much attention in progressive circles: a real sea-change in LGBT acceptance of half-loaf Democratic commitments to equality. Put aside, if you can, the motives and underlying agenda of the most important Prop 8 proponents, and the lies they told to push the initiative over the line to victory. The actual language of Prop 8–“no” to gay marriage, along with “yes” or at least “maybe” to everything short of that–is highly congruent with the default-drive position of many, and probably a majority, of Democratic pols in the very recent past. The Democratic nominee for president in 2004 took this position. So, too, did the 2008 candidate for president often thought of as most “progressive,” John Edwards. And it’s within shouting distance of Obama’s own position, even though he did make clear his own opposition to the initiative. And it’s hard to find a prominent Democratic elected official in culturally conservative parts of the country who hasn’t followed the no-to-gay-marriage, yes-to-domestic-partnerships template, though it’s not so hard to find some who haven’t even gone that far in a progressive direction.
Why is that postion now being deemed so insultingly unacceptable in progressive company? I’d say it’s mainly because Prop 8 overturned established marriage rights that upwards of 20,000 couples joyfully took advantage of during the five-month regime of legalized gay marriage in California. Whereas in previous gay marriage struggles Democrats might be grudgingly forgiven for failing to have the political courage to blaze new trails, Prop 8 represents a (literally) reactionary step back, and in a state that is so often described as a cultural and political trend-shaper. Even as Prop 8 has galvanized the argument that gay marriage should be regarded as a fundamental right indicative of basic equality, not as a negotiable sign of “progress” or “tolerance,” Prop 8 has almost certainly changed, probably forever, the terms on which LGBT folk will participate in the progressive coalition and the Democratic Party, despite the obvious lack of political alternatives.
I think it’s actually a testament to progressive faith in Team Obama’s political acumen that it’s generally assumed he invited this controversy deliberately by paying Rick Warren the honor of a role in his inauguration. But it’s a conflict that will persist after the echoes of Warren’s invocation have long died.

As Steve Benen and others have noted this week, it looks like Barack Obama’s cabinet probably won’t include any appointees from the South. (Depending on your definition of the words “cabinet” and “South,” Energy Czar designate Carol Browner, a native of South Florida, might be an exception, though she hasn’t lived there in 16 years).
Interesting, but of questionable relevance, as evidenced by this quote buried deep in a let’s-manufacture-a-grievance story in Politico today:

Gordon Taylor, a former chief of staff to a southern Democratic member, said some Blue Dog Democrats didn’t even realize the gap in geographic diversity until it was pointed out to them.
“The funny thing is, it hasn’t really been an issue,” Taylor said. “People have been so focused on philosophy and ideology that geography hasn’t really come up.”

Same here, I would say.
But there’s nothing that mysterious about it. As Tom Schaller quoted me in Salon today as observing, some of the more likely Obama appointees from the South (e.g., Sam Nunn, Jim Hunt, Artur Davis, Jim Clyburne, Shirley Franklin) took themselves out of the running for one reason or another. Tim Kaine could have probably gotten a cabinet post, but likely decided that he didn’t want to turn Virginia over to his Republican Lieutenant Governor less than a year before the next gubernatorial election there. Max Cleland’s name came up in connection with VA, but he did that same gig more than thirty years ago, and is reportedly having some health problems. Inez Tenenbaum of SC was on some lists for Education Secretary, but Obama chose, wisely I think, to choose a nominee more involved in the big intra-progressive debates over education reform. And John Edwards would have been a lead-pipe cinch for some major appointment if he hadn’t developed some personal issues earlier this year.
In any event, some southerners, from the above list or others, will eventually join Obama’s cabinet. But as I responded in an email to an inquiring friend earlier today, no, I certainly don’t feel like my southern face has been slapped. The best thing Barack Obama can do to build on his relatively strong showing in the South this year is to quickly get things done, and he’s assembled a team well-equipped to do just that.

We are getting close to the end of cabinet nominations for president-elected Obama. In a dual surprise (at least at the time they were first leaked), he’s picked Colorado Senator Ken Salazar to head Interior, and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack for USDA.
Some observers wonder why Salazar would want to go from being a senator to heading a “second-tier” Cabinet agency, but that may understate the importance of Interior to westerners. The department is, well, something of the regional landlord, and given Salazar’s background (particularly on water issues), it’s probably a good fit. There’s some initial handwringing in Democratic circles about yet another Senate seat coming open prematurely, but given the steady drift towards the Donkey Party by Colorado and the talent vacuum afflicting Republicans in that state (Tom Tancredo is their likeliest Senate candidate!), it shouldn’t be that big a problem.
Vilsack was a surprise if only because he had signaled some time ago that he was not under consideration for a post in the Obama administration. There will be some serious grumbling about Vilsack from the rapidly growing “foodie” movement, if only because of his background in the very lair of Demon Corn, Iowa. But with Tom Harkin standing athwart the Senate Agriculture Committee, the Obamaites may have figured it was better to get a prominent and famously wonky Iowan to fill the post, even if they do plan some sort of major changes at USDA. And the potential Ag Secretary that most speculators expected as of last week, John Salazar, was a no-go for obvious reasons.
In terms of the remaining major posts, there are now reports that California Rep. Xavier Becerra has taken himself out of the running for US Trade Representative on grounds that trade policy didn’t look to be a major Obama priority. Labor could go to any one of a number of labor-friendly wonks or pols, from David Bonior to Mary Beth Maxwell to Jennifer Granholm (from a diversity point of view, there does seem to be a relatively low number of women on board, though that’s not true at the White House staff/subcabinet levels).
But while you never know what will transpire when Obama’s nominations move to the next stage, so far there’s a grand total of one major appointee who looks to be in line for a difficult confirmation process in Congress: Attorney General-designee Eric Holder. And that’s simply because Republicans and some Democrats will enjoy the opportunity to work out some anti-Clinton tensions by rehashing the Mark Rich pardon.