According to all the insider accounts, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was the finalist with Sarah Palin for the 2008 Republican vice presidential nod. He’s now generally considered a major player for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. In both cases, Pawlenty’s major credential is that he doesn’t offend any significant conservative interest groups.
I’ve already written a couple of pieces suggesting that this guy is a less than a political fireball. But he really does seem to be positioning himself as the ultimate lowest-common-denominator candidate. Just today (via Matt Yglesias), I read a Tim Paw op-ed in Politico that was one of the dumbest, paint-by-the-numbers utterances on record.
This was presumably Tim’s response to the Obama budget, but it could have been written twenty or even thirty years ago, for delivery at some midwestern Lincoln Day Dinner that couldn’t attract a better speaker. Entitled “Ponzi Scheme on the Potomac,” the piece never bothers to explain its initial assertion that the federal budget is indeed anything like a “Ponzi Scheme,” and then descends into incoherent banality.
Pawlenty’s Big Idea, you see, is a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget. This was a very popular idea a long, long time ago, until it became apparent that (1) it was a way for politicians to avoid talking about how, actually, the federal budget should be balanced, and (2) such an amendment would never, ever, be enacted, in no small part because it might require spending cuts and/or tax increases that a majority of politicians, and for that matter, a majority of Americans, would oppose.
Within seconds of wheeling out this antediluvian idea, Pawlenty calls for making Bush’s tax cuts permanent, and for additional tax cuts, which shows you why he favors a balanced budget only in the abstract sense of the term.
Tim Paw’s think piece wheezes to the finish line with a recitation of his proud fiscal record in Minnesota, capped by the boast that he “moved the state out of the Top 10 in tax burden.” Too bad that only 37% of Gopher State voters say they’d vote for him for president, according to a recent Rasmussen survey.
All in all, it’s hard to imagine Pawlenty outclassing Republican rivals like Palin or Huckabee, who, whatever their other abundant demerits, are interesting people who can light up rooms full of rabid conservatives. And it’s hard to imagine this plodding pol chasing Barack Obama around the ring in a general election debate. If this is the best the GOP can offer, please bring him on.

Reading Peggy Noonan is emotionally difficult for me. For one thing, she was the first of a breed that I find inherently obnoxious: the Celebrity Speechwriter. Perhaps it’s just envy, since I happened to have labored at that craft in total obscurity for decades. But there’s something, well, unseemly, about a ghost that is so all-pervasively visible, and so willing to take credit for the golden words uttered by employers who, after all, were actually elected to public office and bear responsibility for their deeds as well as their words.
But more importantly, ever since she obtained her own bylines and television gigs, Noonan has steadily “grown” into one of those imperious columnists who express exasperation at the idiocy and small-mindedness of politicians, particularly those who happen to harbor policy views at variance with her own. And that’s especially annoying when, as in her snarky take on the State of the Union Address for the Wall Street Journal, she is offering dubious and partisan “advice” to Barack Obama, designed to attack what he is doing while professing sympathy for his challenges.
There are no less than three such toxic bits of “advice” in the column in question. First, Noonan mocks President Obama for allowing Congress to push him around, unlike, of course, her first Big Boss, Ronald Reagan:

James Baker, that shrewd and knowing man, never, as Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff, allowed his president to muck about with congressmen, including those of his own party. A president has stature and must be held apart from Congress critters. He can meet with them privately, in the Oval Office. There, once, a Republican senator who’d announced opposition to a bill important to the president tried to claim his overall loyalty: “Mr. President, you know I’d jump out of a plane for you if you asked, but—”
“Jump,” said Reagan. The senator, caught, gave in.
That’s how you treat them. You don’t let them blur your picture and make you more common. You don’t let them call the big shots.

Aside from reflecting the eternal Cult of Reagan, these words certainly distort the actual relationship of the 40th president with Congress. Nothing was more central to the Reagan presidency than his initial budget and tax proposals. His budget director, David Stockman, wrote an entire book on how these proposals were mangled into a fiscal abomination by Members of Congress from both parties. It was entitled, revealingly, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed.
Quite likely Barack Obama erred during his first year by deferring too much to congressional committee barons on health care reform, and on the composition of appropriations bills. But that was a matter of degree, not some fundamental failure to pursue a Fuhrerprinzip that separates the Big Men from the small. Obama’s immediate predecessor was arguably a small man in genuine leadership capacity, but no one since Nixon has demanded more imperial powers. America can do without more of that.
Second, Noonan stipulates that Obama’s anti-Washington rhetoric is laughably in contradiction with his policy agenda:

The central fact of the speech was the contradiction at its heart. It repeatedly asserted that Washington is the answer to everything. At the same time it painted a picture of Washington as a sick and broken place. It was a speech that argued against itself: You need us to heal you. Don’t trust us, we think of no one but ourselves.

Now you don’t have to think too deeply about this to understand that Noonan is saying that “Washington” is “liberalism.” So “anti-Washington” sentiment is conservatism. Thus, presumably, for Obama to redeem the “change Washington” rhetoric of his presidential campaign, he needs to become conservative! What a brilliant idea!
This is all pretty ludicrous, of course, since recent conservative administrations (particularly those following Noonan’s exalted notions of presidential leadership) have been avid to use federal power to wage undeclared wars, usurp civil liberties, and preempt state regulations of corporations. Moreover, you can be angry at “Washington” not just for trying to do too much, but for trying to do too little, or for doing what it does poorly or corruptly. “Change” can be in any sort of direction, not just Peggy Noonan’s direction.
Third, Noonan extends an especially devious back-handed compliment to Obama (employing the hoary device of an anonymous “friendly critic” who seems to resemble Noonan herself) of suggesting that he’s “too honest” to undertake the obvious route of “moving to the center,” by which she means “moving to the right:”

“I don’t think he can do a Bill Clinton pivot, because he’s not a pragmatist, he’s an ideologue. He’s a community organizer. He mixes the discrimination he felt as a young man with the hardship so many feel in this country, and he wants to change it and the way to change that is government programs and not opportunity.”
The great issue, this friendly critic added, is debt. The public knows this; Congress and the White House do not. “To me the Republicans are as rotten as the Democrats” in terms of spending. “Almost.”
“I hope we have big changes in 2010,” the friend said. Only significant loss will force the president to focus on spending. “To heal our country we need to get the arrogance out of the White House and the elitists out of the Congress. We need tough love. We need a real adult in the White House because we don’t have adults in the Congress.”

So Obama can only be saved by a Republican victory in 2010 (the only “big changes” on tap), which will enable him to act as an “adult” on “debt,” which the people–and Peggy Noonan and Obama’s “friend”–understand as “the great issue.” (Never mind that it didn’t seem to be a “great issue” when George W. Bush was running up most of the debt we now face).
What’s really going on in Noonan’s column, beyond a remarkable display both of arrogance and of disjointed, illogical writing, is a theme we will hear a lot of between now and November. Republicans understand that for all his struggles, Barack Obama remains more popular and trusted than they are. Heavy-handed right-wing attacks on the president as some sort of treasonous monster can backfire, and also don’t comport well with the sort of well-bred sophistication that conservatives like Noonan cultivate. So Obama is Gulliver among the Lilliputians, held back from his better impulses by the petty spendthrifts of Congress and the hobgoblins of his own ideological and “community organizer” background.
If and when Republicans make big gains this November and succeed in completely thwarting Obama’s efforts to act as president, “friends” like Noonan will sadly conclude that he couldn’t overcome his shortcomings, and begin calling for a “real adult”–Mitt Romney, anyone?–in 2012. Bet on it.

In the fog of commentary that will come out on the release of the president’s FY 2011 budget today, you can look for two simple optics. The administration and its allies will argue that this budget combines short-term job creation and demand stimulus with the first steps towards long-term deficit reduction. Republicans will shriek about every spending and deficit number. Their biggest challenge is to figure out how long to pause between demands for balanced budgets and demands for deficit-boosting lower taxes.
All in all, it’s a spectacle you can safely ignore.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama executed his well-advertised double pivot toward job generation and fiscal restraint. Almost lost in the pundits’ babble was the release of a CBO report, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020,” coupled with CBO director Doug Elmendorf’s testimony to the House and Senate budget committees. CBO’s analysis makes it clear just how daunting the employment and fiscal challenges are over the next decade . . . and how perilous the political terrain will be for the Democratic Party.
Let’s start with jobs. For a variety of structural reasons, despite the severity of the recession, CBO predicts a slower-than-average recovery, with fourth-quarter to fourth-quarter GDP growth of only 2.1 percent in 2010 and 2.4 percent in 2011. This means that unemployment this November is likely to be about where it is right now—namely, 10 percent. At the end of 2011, it will stand at 9.1 percent. As growth accelerates in 2012, unemployment will decline more quickly, but it will still be high by historical standards—between 7.5 and 8 percent—on the eve of the next presidential election. Assuming no new recession, we won’t return to full employment until 2016.
These projections are very bad news for middle-class Americans—and for politicians as well. A midterm election conducted in these circumstances is likely to go poorly for the majority party, all the more so because no one thinks that the short-term measures the president proposed will make much of a difference over the next ten months. And no president wants to begin his campaign for reelection with unemployment over 9 percent.
What about the fiscal situation? Using the legally required baseline assumptions, the budget deficit is expected to average about $600 billion a year between 2011 and 2020, and the debt-to-GDP ratio would rise from 53 percent to 67 percent. Using more realistic assumptions, the annual deficits would be much larger, and the debt would reach nearly 100 percent of GDP. Almost no one thinks that our economy could sustain this level of borrowing and debt accumulation without severe damage, including soaring interest payments that would crowd out needed public and private investment.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, while Obama has accurately identified the economic challenges we face, the responses he has proposed thus far are woefully inadequate. Last week, he told Diane Sawyer that he’d rather be a successful one-term president than a mediocre two-term president. Unfortunately, there’s a third possibility. To avoid it and become the transformational president he clearly wants to be, he must challenge his administration, his party, and the entire political system to acknowledge the true scope of our ills and embrace solutions commensurate with the problems.

Just to follow up on Ed Kilgore’s post on “Obama in the Lion’s Den,” the echoes from the President’s visit to the Republican house caucus annual confab are still reverberating across the political terrain, and it was clearly a huge win for Obama. (Charles Lemos of MyDD presents a video and the entire transcript, with another good analysis of what happened right here) There are a couple of strategic lessons, however, that should not get lost amid the many glowing reviews.
For one, if you know you’ve got an edge in terms of policy and the ability to articulate your arguments persuasively, by all means accept the challenge to debate, show up and make your case. This seems obvious enough, but many a politician would beg off, make noises about schedule conflicts and the like, worried about being outnumbered or ambushed.
For another, there is a difference between selling out the store and bipartisanship. Many of my fellow progressives have lamented Obama’s outstretched hand to his adversaries as some sort of sell-out, and they argue that he should basically ignore the Republicans in pursuit of legislative majorities. But President Obama understands that national leadership requires bipartisan gestures, at least. Some opinion polls show strong majorities favoring a more bipartisan tone in governance. People are tiring of the rat-a-tat-tat of partisan warfare. But Obama understands that bipartisan outreach doesn’t mean compromising key principles; it just requires an openness to dialogue and an expressed willingness to search for common ground with the adversary.
Yet another is the power of civility in the throes of heated debate. President Obama projected an image of strength, defending his views with eloquence and courteous respect toward his adversaries. He let fly a couple of light, but well-targeted zingers. But his overall tone was one of respectful engagement. Let the adversary look trifling and snarky, but keep your tone on the high road. This helps to win the hearts of the undecided. As Lemos explained it well in his MyDD post:

Some had characterized the event as Daniel walking into the lion’s den. If so, Daniel mauled himself some lions, off teleprompter no less. Perhaps declawed is a better word. It was a feast for Democrats and hopefully for the nation to behold the President, armed with only his wits, in total and complete command but today’s event need not be necessarily famine for the GOP either… At its core, it was the most clear and poignant call to leave behind the slash and burn politics of the past and instead engage in a constructive dialogue in the interests of good governance….
…It is really must watch television, underscoring the fact that whatever the failings of leadership over the past year, Barack Obama possesses talents that few others do.Arguments may have been demolished but the edifice of state was constructed or perhaps at the very least a foundation was laid to move forward in the national interest. I’d daresay this was Barack Obama’s finest hour yet. Let’s hope that there is more of this to come.

After all was said, Obama’s subtextual message was, “Look, I’m willing to work with those who show good faith. But enough already with the demogoguery. We’re not going to retreat on fighting for reforms the American people want. We welcome your support and sincere compromise proposals, but we’re not going to be deterred by partisan obstructionism.”
That’s a good message for reaching swing voters, and it’s important to understand that these lessons apply more broadly than just to presidential politics. They can be used to good advantage by Dems at all levels of political conflict, especially in this already over-heated political year.

The President made an appearance at the House Republican Retreat in Baltimore today, and it was quite a show, particularly as he answered pointed questions from several conservative luminaries like House Study Committee chairman Mike Pence, House Budget Committee ranking member Paul Ryan, and House GOP leadership member Marsha Blackburn.
The transcript is here, and a summary from Talking Points Memo along with the video is here.
Much of the exchange involved Obama’s argument that he’s frequently incorporated Republican ideas in the policy proposals that congressional Republicans have uniformly rejected, and House GOP complaints that the president doesn’t take seriously their larger proposals on health care or the economy. On several occasions, Obama gently reminded the audience that he can only take policies seriously if actual experts do, and if they are even theoretically workable. But this didn’t keep House GOPers from brandishing copies of their “plans” as though heft guaranteed substance.
Since Obama and House Republicans are operating from different perceptions of basic reality, and different “facts,” along with different points of view, there was never any likelihood that today’s gabfest would create some new bipartisan breakthrough, even on minor issues. But perhaps it will inhibit Republican elected officials a bit from indulging their base voters and activists in some of their more lurid expressions of hatred and calumny towards the president. And in the meantime, it offered Democrats some nice video clips of Obama more or less running circles around his would-be tormenters with relative ease.

The National Tea Party Convention scheduled to rev up next week at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville took another major hit yesterday, as two of the three big headline speakers, Reps. Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn, canceled their appearances, citing possible House Ethics Committee problems with the financing of the event by the for-profit group Tea Party Nation. This development compounds the widespread criticism of the convention by many tea party activists, and the withdrawal of several major sponsors, with most critics condemning the high registration cost to participants and/or the uncertain disposition of convention proceeds.
At present, the Tea Party Convention’s grip on credibility is pretty much down to one finger-hold: keynote speaker Sarah Palin, who, as of yesterday, said she was still planning to join the hoedown in Nashville. Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent posted this excerpt from an interview Palin did with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren:

Oh, you betcha I’m going to be there. I’m going to speak there because there are people traveling from many miles away to hear what that tea party movement is all about and what that message is that should be received by our politicians in Washington. I’m honored to get to be there.
I won’t personally gain from being there. The speaker’s fee will go right back into the cause. I’ll be able to donate it to people and to events, those things that I believe in that will help perpetuate the message, the message being, Government, you have constitutional limits. You better start abiding by them.

Aside from Palin’s presence, the Tea Party Convention still enjoys sponsorship from some pretty heavy right-wing hitters, including Judicial Watch, the American Taxpayers Union, Eagle Forum and Vision America. One Christian Right warhorse, Judge Roy Moore, is still scheduled to speak, though it’s unclear whether another, Rick Scarborough, will show. It will be fascinating to see how conservative media, most notably Tea Party loudspeaker Fox News, covers the event.
The Greater Meaning of the convention’s gradual unraveling is as hard to deduce as its original significance. Some originally pointed to it as the beginning of a third party effort, while others charged it with representing the takeover of the Tea Party Movement by the GOP. Since it can’t be both, it’s obvious that experts differ on this score. It’s entirely possible that the event’s questionable financial structure and high registration fees really are the only beef. From my own past dealings with events involving Members of Congress, I’m sure that Bachmann’s and Blackburn’s Ethics Committee concerns are perfectly legitimate, whatever else may be going on.
The whole thing is becoming a source of embarrassment for both Tea Party activists and their Republican allies, at a time when they supposedly are marching arm in arm towards Washington to rout the godless Socialists and Terrorist Lovers who currently occupy the seats of power.

So lots of Americans, we are told, really wish the president would reach out to the Republican Party and come up with bipartisan solutions for our nation’s problems. This very day, the president is in fact trudging up to Baltimore to attend a retreat of the House Republican Caucus, an organization devoted to his complete political destruction.
But before anyone gets agitated about “bipartisan solutions” or the failure to achieve them, it’s important to take a look at where Republicans actually are on big controversial issues–like, just to pull one example out of the air, health care policy.
At the New Republic today, Washington & Lee University law professor Timothy Jost gives us a refresher course on GOP health care policy, from AHiPs to interstate insurance sales. He concludes their proposals wouldn’t do a whole lot for the uninsured, the insured, or health care costs and federal spending. But the most important conclusion he reaches is that there simply isn’t a lot of “common ground” on which to build any sort of bipartisan compromise.
The two parties presently come at the issue in fundamentally different ways, with Republicans, in particular, being transfixed by the desire to encourage the purchase of individual health insurance policies, if not individual purchases of health care without insurance.
Maybe the president and House Republicans can find plenty to talk about in Baltimore today. But comparing notes on health reform is probably a waste of time.

I finally got around to reading a much-derided Sally Quinn column that appeared in the Washington Post yesterday, and I have to say, you really have to read it to believe it. Indeed, it took me three readings before I was entirely sure it wasn’t some sort of elaborate put-on.
Alas, it’s not. Quinn, a Washington social maven with a spotty journalistic career and a marriage to former Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, suggests that the best thing Barack Obama can do for his presidency is to spend more time (along with his family and his top staff) on the Washington social circuit.
To strengthen her argument, she conducts an amazing reinterpretation of the modern presidency to show that presidents who spurned the dinner-and-cocktail-party rituals of the Emerald City have gotten themselves into worlds of trouble. She suggests that Nixon’s and Clinton’s impeachments, Carter’s failure to get re-elected, and George W. Bush’s ultimate political decline all were significantly caused by the disdain they instilled amongst the local social lions (presumably like herself). This self-referential hallucination is bad enough as revisionist history. But that she would claim, and the very serious Post would publish, that at this particular moment in history Barack Obama isn’t spending enough time sucking up to the poohbahs of the hated capital city is bizarre beyond all reality.
The sad thing is that Quinn isn’t completely alone in her weird bubble. Mark Halperin of TIME, co-author of the endlessly discussed 2008 campaign book Game Change, recently wrote that one of Obama’s five biggest mistakes during his first year in office was insufficiently “wooing official Washington:”

[T]he First Couple and their top aides have shown no hankering for the Establishment seal of approval, nor have they accepted the glut of invitations to embassy parties and other tribal rituals of the political class. In the sphere of Washington glitter, the Clintons were clumsy and the Bush team indifferent, but the Obama Administration has turned a cold shoulder, disappointing Beltway salons and newsrooms whose denizens hoped the über-cool newbies would play.

Lord have mercy. Can’t disappoint those “Beltway salons and newsrooms,” can we?
I’ve never cared for the lefty blogospheric habit of referring to the chattering classes of Washington as “the Village,” implying as it does personal knowledge of the motives and characters of a very large and diverse bunch of total strangers. But if there is a Village, Sally Quinn is the mayor, and Halperin is one of her spokesmen.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic. It appeared before the president delivered his State of the Union address.
“The problems we inherited were far worse than most inside and out of government had expected; the recession was deeper that most inside and out of government had predicted. Curing these problems has taken more time and a higher toll than any of us wanted. Unemployment is far too high. Projected federal spending—if government refuses to tighten its own belt—will also be far too high and could weaken and shorten the economic recovery now underway.
“We’re witnessing an upsurge of productivity and impressive evidence that American industry will once again become competitive in markets at home and abroad, ensuring more jobs and better incomes for the nation’s work force. But our confidence must also be tempered by realism and patience. Quick fixes and artificial stimulants repeatedly applied over decades are what brought us the … disorders that we’ve now paid such a heavy price to cure.
“The permanent recovery in employment, production, and investment we seek won’t come in a sharp, short spurt. It’ll build carefully and steadily in the months and years ahead. In the meantime, the challenge of government is to identify the things that we can do now to ease the massive economic transition for the American people.”
A sneak preview of Barack Obama’s forthcoming State of the Union address? Nope. It’s part of the address Ronald Reagan delivered in January 1983, when unemployment stood at 10.8 percent. If today’s Republicans heard these very words coming out of Obama’s mouth, would they applaud him or denounce him? And what if the president were to recommend a comprehensive deficit reduction strategy that included a standby tax increase, contingent on spending cuts? That’s what Reagan, who had already signed a significant tax increase in August 1982, proposed in his address. Was he a RINO?
Yes, Obama needs to focus and clarify his agenda. But Republicans have a responsibility as well—to reconsider their anti-tax theology, to reengage with the governance process, to address the country’s real problems, not just the politics of those problems. If they don’t, they may make some tactical gains this November, but they won’t be selling any durable goods the American people will want to buy. Right now the Republicans are thinking too much about 1994 and not nearly enough about 1996.