It has taken several days for the full implications of Obama’s budget and message to sink in among conservatives and Republicans, but now the surprise has passed and the gloves are coming off.
The conservative hope that Obama might actually be the timid, dithering, “split the difference” centrist that some progressives feared he was has now evaporated. On the contrary, the scope of his ambition to be a solidly progressive Roosevelt-style president makes him appear as a genuine threat — not just for committed Republicans, but to a substantial group beyond. For many, this threat is so grave that insuring the defeat of Obama’s political program now takes priority over what might be best for the economy.
The larger group beyond the usual Republican base that finds Obama’s program threatening is essentially comprised of the substantial number of relatively un-ideological Middle Americans – small businesspeople, managers and office park voters among others — who –deep down – simply don’t accept a Keynesian view of economics or understand the need for significant, ongoing government intervention in the economy. On survey questions they will often support certain specific and appealing government programs but then will simultaneously reject “deficit spending”, “big government” and “regulations” as unambiguous evils. If you asked many of these Americans to choose between, on the one hand, a “lost decade of growth” like Japan suffered as well as continuing crises in health care, energy and the environment and, on the other hand, the unknown long-term political consequences of a wildly successful and deeply progressive Democratic Presidency, many will hem and haw for a moment but finally opt for “the devil they know” – recession and stagnation – rather than the uncharted waters of an energetically progressive future.
The result is that Democrats can’t rely on Obama’s tremendous advantage in personal popularity right now to keep the Republicans on the defensive. On the contrary, Democrats must begin preparing to defend themselves against a massive, well-financed and coordinated, three pronged offensive.
Prong Number 1 — The Official Party Line – The most familiar and visible of the three prongs of this offensive is the official Republican Party — represented by the Congressional Republicans and the Republican National Committee. By now virtually every politically involved American has heard the official Republican position. The battle against Obama is a direct clash between socialism and the free market, between liberalism gone completely berserk and the traditional American Way. Buried in the byzantine twists and turns of Rush Limbaugh’s epic , Fidel Castro- length, pronunciamento to the Conservative Political Action Conference last week lie a collection of virtually every one of his “oldies but goodies” and “greatest hits” drawn from his radio show.
By itself, however, this official Republican message will not be sufficient. It needs to be reinforced by two additional forces to successfully challenge Obama’s coalition. It needs (1) “responsible” apologists to give it intellectual cover with more moderate voters and (2) “Black Ops’ boys” to do the political “wet work” – the stuff too ugly to display in public.
Prong Number 2 — The “Responsible” Apologists — David Brooks’ retreat into the boilerplate anti-Obama rhetoric of the Republican National Committee in his recent New York Times column (misleadingly titled “a Moderate Manifesto”) signals the groveling surrender of the “responsible” and “sophisticated” conservatives to the Republican Party base. As Ed Kilgore has noted, for Brooks,’ “moderation is defined as compromise, any kind of compromise, and “moderates” are invariably urged to pursue a course of action that coincides with the immediate political needs of the Republican Party… you will note that [Brooks’] column essentially urges “moderates” to join Rush Limbaugh in derailing Obama’s agenda.”
In fact, the truth is that, without directly using the word “socialism”, Brooks’ entire column is nothing more than a euphemistic restatement of the Republican Party’s central accusation.
Just look at what Brooks actually says:
America:
• [supports] “relatively limited central government”
• “puts competitiveness and growth first, not redistribution first”
• [is] “skeptical of top-down planning”
• “has never been a society riven by class resentment.”
Obama’s administration, on the other hand, is:
• “swept up in its own revolutionary fervor…
• “caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it” …
• “a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new” …
• “expands state intervention”…
• “concentrates enormous power in Washington”…
• “is predicated on a class divide…All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward”
• [will lead to] “polarizing warfare that is sure to flow from Obama’s über-partisan budget.”
This is not even remotely subtle. It references quite literally every traditional anti-socialist cliché of the previous century except for the use of the actual word “socialism” itself. (Well, OK, the little “uber-partisan” thing hiding in there is a tiny bit subtle — a subliminal hint of Mein Kampf and Nazi jackboots to distract from the near-monotonous recitation of 1950’s anti-“pinko” buzzwords).
In fact, Brooks’ column is for all practical purposes a Frank Luntz-type “words that work” playbook for other editorial and commentary writers. The words above are, in combination, a roundabout, “responsible” way of saying precisely the same things as the Republican National Committee.
Other “responsible” conservatives are also quickly falling in line. In a Wednesday Washington Post commentary Michael Gerson describes Obama’s budget as “ideologically ambitious, politically ruthless and radical to its core… This is not merely the rejection of “trickle-down economics,” it is a weakening of the theoretical basis for capitalism — that free individuals are generally more rational and efficient in making investment decisions than are government planners.” Once again, the basic RNC charge of “socialism” is repeated while carefully avoiding the use of the actual word.
(Note: let’s be clear about this. “Responsible” conservatives actually do know that policies like progressive taxation, government regulation of business and federal protection of the environment are more accurately traced back to Theodore Roosevelt than to Lenin and Mao Tse-tung. They are, however, endowed with a sophistication and nuance of perspective that allows them to see a deeper truth that lies beyond such superficial objections)
As a result, Democrats should look for each and every one of the venerable tropes trotted out by Brooks and Gerson to start showing up in editorial pages, business magazine commentaries and so on all across the country. There are a very large group of moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats who would be embarrassed to turn purple while screaming “socialist” like the red-meat conservatives at a Sarah Palin rally. They will, however, be quite happy to gravely knit their brows and purse their lips in theatrical displays of preoccupation while muttering ominously about their concern over “extreme” and “irresponsible” measures.

Read more…

So exactly how angry are wealthy people becoming about the “socialistic” threat of a return to the tax policies of the bad old days of the 1990s? Listen to one of their more fervent advocates, via the Washington Independent’s David Weigel:

Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), who gives his departing interns copies of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” told me today that the response to President Obama’s economic policies reminded him of what happened in the 51-year-old novel.
“People are starting to feel like we’re living through the scenario that happened in ‘Atlas Shrugged,’” said Campbell. “The achievers, the people who create all the things that benefit rest of us, are going on strike. I’m seeing, at a small level, a kind of protest from the people who create jobs, the people who create wealth, who are pulling back from their ambitions because they see how they’ll be punished for them.”

As anyone who’s read Rand’s mammoth and monomaniacal novel can tell you, the heroes of Atlas Shrugged are the capitalists who literally go on strike, bringing society to its knees by withholding their talents. Campbell seems to be warning us that today’s rich are getting tired of the terrible “punishment” they are enduring from the greedy parasites around them. We may soon be denied the life-giving talents of stock traders, bankers, mortgage brokers, strip-mall developers, and a whole host of other creative people who are yoked to the top tax bracket. They’ve done nothing wrong, but thanks to looting by the poor, the economy’s collapsed, and the best among us are being asked to pay.
I don’t know if John Campbell’s bought the whole Objectivist package from reading Rand, and privately considers all the nice churches in his California district evil temples of life-hating mysticism and theft. But like Rick Santelli, Cambell’s an authentic apostle of the angry overclass that’s sick of being betrayed by “losers” and then expected to help keep the scum alive.
Here’s hoping that Rep. Campbell’s “strike” begins no later than the end of his current term in the House.

A few addenda to my Tuesday post on healthcare strategy: Sam Stein reports at HuffPo that advocates of a single payer system will have representation at today’s White House Summit on health care reform. Rep John Conyers “a known single-payer advocate,” along with an advocacy group, Physicians for a National Health Program will participate in the summit. The group had put out a press release earlier in the week complaining that,

“Groups representing physicians, nurses, and consumers who advocate for a single-payer system of national health insurance have thus far been excluded from the summit,” says the release. “The Clinton task force on health reform made a similar mistake of excluding the voices of those who support a single-payer system… At a time when public support for single-payer is greater than ever – more than 60 percent in recent polls – we urge President Obama not to make the same mistake.”

Obama “has generally shied-away” from outright endorsing a single-payer approach, although he has made favorable comments about the single-payer concept, according to Stein. Conyers and the progressive physicians group undoubtedly will provide a strong voice at the summit, although there will be 150 participants clamoring for attention.
In yesterday’s New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s article “Obama Taps Clinton Ideas but Not Clinton Herself” discusses some possible ways Secretary of State Clinton’s expertise on health care reform could be tapped and notes major differences in the strategy deployed by Presidents Clinton and Obama:

To begin with, the Clinton plan was drafted in secret and delivered to lawmakers as a fait accompli; Mr. Obama is articulating broad principles and leaving the details to Congress…President Bill Clinton waited 11 months after taking office in 1993 to roll out his plan, a delay many Democrats say was deadly. Mr. Obama is forging ahead after six weeks. Mr. Clinton focused heavily on access to care; Mr. Obama is framing the debate in terms of cost. The Clinton plan left Americans worried that they would be forced to switch doctors. Mr. Obama’s message, Mr. Axelrod said, is, “If you are happy with what you have, you can keep it.”
Once the stimulus bill was enacted, Mr. Obama moved quickly to include money for health care changes in his budget, something Mr. Clinton did not do because his economic advisers wanted to focus on deficit reduction first, said Chris Jennings, who was Mr. Clinton’s senior health policy adviser. “That’s really key,” Mr. Jennings said. The delay, he said, “probably was the reason why we were unable to sustain interest and support.”
Mr. Obama, by contrast, made a conscious decision to tackle deficit reduction and health care, for which he set aside $634 billion in his budget, at once. “We’re 16 years later,” Mr. Axelrod said, “and I think the imperative is even greater because of the budget. Health care reform is a fiscal imperative now, not just a moral imperative.”

Thus far, President Obama’s initiatives have received a generally positive response from some sectors of the health care industry, as Ceci Connolly and Dan Eggen report in today’s Washington Post. Eggen and Connolly explain that Obama’s “modest approach” was favorably received by the pharmaceutical industry and “could save the drug companies billions a year compared with price controls,” and,

The lure for the industry is the prospect of tens of millions of new customers: If Obama succeeds in fulfilling his pledge to cover many more Americans, those newly insured people will get checkups, purchase medicine, undergo physical therapy and get surgeries they cannot afford today.

Progressives will be happy to note that Obama’s health plan is not all good with the drug lobby. The authors quote W.J. “Billy” Tauzin, a former congressman who now heads up the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA:”There are things we don’t like about it. But there’s time to discuss all that.” The authors quote other health industry groups that have significant misgivings.
“Obama’s Almost Perfect Strategy” in TNR‘s “The Treatment” blog by Jacob Hacker, co-director of the Center for Health, Economic, and Family Security offers four strategy reccomendations for the Administraton. Hacker, editor of “Health at Risk: America’s Ailing Health System–and How to Heal It,” also advises Obama reform team thusly:

It makes sense to keep the targets for political attacks hidden for as long as possible, but that does not mean that Obama and his advisers should start dropping key priorities-priorities that they have already articulated and defended-before the debate begins. For if there is a final lesson from the Clinton reform debacle, it is that the President’s power is greatest as an agenda setter rather than a legislator. Obama should make sure the agenda is set correctly.
So when the administration presses its agenda to leaders in Congress, it shouldn’t sweat the details. But it should make clear that the big three-employer contributions, an Exchange, and a public health insurance plan aren’t details. They are the essence of Obama’s vision of a transformed system.

Stolberg notes that “Experts say the political climate for passing major health care changes is more favorable than ever, with business leaders, pharmaceutical and hospital executives, insurance officials and advocates for patients all agreeing the need is urgent.” Stolberg’s point about Mrs. Clinton’s influence being felt as the battle lines are drawn is duly-noted. Long before Mrs. Clinton, however, Senator Ted Kennedy lead the charge, and the reforms that pass will bear his imprint and reflect his tireless leadership on the issue.

The ever-vigilant Spencer Ackerman alerts us today in the Washington Independent that the President today issued a memorandum ordering the Office of Management and Budget and executive agencies to “restrict no-bid contracts; to rein in outsourcing of ‘inherently governmental activities’; and to, if necessary, cancel wasteful contracts outright.”
Ackerman notes in particular that Obama focuses on the Defense Department:

[Obama called for] processes for ongoing review of, existing contracts in order to identify contracts that are wasteful, inefficient, or not otherwise likely to meet the agency’s needs, and to formulate appropriate corrective action in a timely manner. Such corrective action may include modifying or canceling such contracts in a manner and to the extent consistent with applicable laws, regulations, and policy.

Cost overruns are, of course, endemic at DoD. Thus, says Ackerman:

If I was a lobbyist for Lockheed or Boeing, I’d be dialing my contacts in the Pentagon and the Hill to figure out what the prospective damage to my company was. And then I’d come up with a strategy to fight this forthcoming Office of Management and Budget review.

The announcement of a new general approach to government contractors raises as many questions as it answers. It’s not always obvious what constitutes “inherently governmental activities,” and contracting sometimes saves a lot of money without corruption. Often the big question isn’t “public versus private,” but how much genuine competition exists among potential providers of services or materials.
But after many years of pro-privatization assumptions in public service delivery at every level of government, it is time to deal with these questions upfront. So Obama’s memo can and should become the beginning of a very big debate.

Sarah Posner at The American Prospect‘s FundamentaList offers up this fine quote from U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), delivered at the Conservative Political Action Committee confab last week:

A nation that raises its children in government schools cannot expect its people to stand for the principles of freedom.

Without question, DeMint seems to be in a strange competition with Gov. Mark Sanford to become the contemporary standard-bearer for the Palmetto State’s rich tradition of right-wing extremism. But the habit of invidiously referring to public schools as “government schools” is one that has in the past been largely limited to the more exotic precincts of libertarians and home-school activists. There is something a bit refreshing about a Republican who frontally attacks public education instead of pretending to cherish it while undermining it through chronic underfunding or vouchers. Still, Americans probably aren’t quite ready to be lashed by any politician for their effete, socialist willingness tolerate Big Government involvement in the education of their children.

I doubt there’s a Democrat much of anywhere who hasn’t enjoyed the contretemps between RNC chairman Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh, which ultimately produced an apology by The Chairman for suggesting that Rush isn’t exactly a serious and constructive figure in American politics. It’s always fun to observe the godlike status assigned by conservatives to a man considered despicable by, well, pretty much everybody who doesn’t think he’s godlike.
But the brouhaha is also raising broader questions about Steele, who occupies a singular niche in a Republican Party that doesn’t have any obvious set of consensus leaders this side of Limbaugh.
From his new perch at the DC Examiner, veteran conservative reporter Byron York suggests today that Steele’s drawing a lot of behind-the-scenes flack for spending most of his time making questionably effective TV appearances while a host of key positions at the RNC remain empty:

Shortly after his January 30 victory in the chairman’s race, Steele fired virtually everyone at the RNC — a move many outsiders applauded after the party’s back-to-back losses in 2006 and 2008. But Steele has yet to replace many of the people he sacked. Now, as Steele enters his second month in the chairman’s office, there is no chief of staff for the RNC. There is no political director. There is no finance director. There is no communications director. Many lesser positions remain empty as well.
“I think it’s been a disaster of a first month,” says one Republican who has served on Capitol Hill and the RNC. “He needs to disappear for 60 days, go and staff the building, put his personal energy into making sure he has the people he wants, and go from there. That’s what people are hoping he will do.”
“It’s not good,” says another GOP politico. “People feel that it’s been very erratic at a time when we really need some sort of stabilizing force.”

Over at National Review Online, Jim Geraghty gives a soapbox to an unnamed “Steele ally” who shares the sentiments reported by York, and also to Steele aide Kurt Anderson, who pretty much dismisses and and all criticism as emanating from job-seekers and hacks. Real Republicans, suggests Anderson, dig Steele deeply. This line of argument led a correspondent of Geraghty’s to respond:

What the heck is this guy smoking? It’s one thing to screw up. It’s another to screw up and insist “people love me”. I see nothing but dismay from Steele supporters on the blogs.”

I personally have no idea whether Steele is a comically inept bozo or just the temporary victim of unrealistic expectations among people in dire need of some leadership. But it’s never a particularly good sign when a national party chairman has to spend this much time explaining himself.

I have a suggestion for anyone who wants to understand how far adrift the GOP has become in its efforts to regain political footing after the Age of Bush.
First, read James Crabtree’s succinct but informative profile of British Conservative Party leader David Cameron from The American Prospect. As Crabtree explains, Cameron’s current status as a man well-positioned to become the next Prime Minister of his country brought the Tories back from oblivion through a systematic effort to overcome its attachment to the old right-wing Thatcherite ideology. Sure, the Tories tried just about everything and everybody else before resorting to an ideological sea-change, but finally began to turn the corner under Cameron.
Second, read this post from the popular conservative site RedState. I choose this as suggested reading not because it’s extreme, but because it is extremely typical of what grassroots conservatives are saying these days. It not only tells conservative critics of the GOP’s stubbornly rigid ideological direction to STFU, but gets pretty hysterical about the very idea that the Right should be “thoughtful” instead of simply howling at the moon with Rush and company. The writer seems to be covering his or her ears and shouting “La la la can’t hear you!”
Looks like Republicans are pretty much where the Tories were not that long ago, when they were so out of touch that they were incapable of taking advantage of Tony Blair’s mistakes. They should maybe think about that before assuming that they can stick with the old-time religion of the Right and simply pray to an angry God that Obama fails and hands them self-vindication and power.

Bob Rosenblatt’s L.A. Times article “A National Healthcare Reform Primer” is a good place to start getting up to speed on the major issues of the current debate on health care refom strategy. In the Q&A section of his article, Rosenblatt does a good job of explaining how health care reform would be financed:

How can the country pay for a reworking of its health insurance system?
Obama has proposed a down payment of $630 billion. Most of the money would come from an increase in federal income taxes by limiting deductions for people making more than $250,000 a year…He also wants to cut payments to Medicare HMOs, saving about $175 billion over 10 years, according to the budget plan issued Thursday. This program, known as Medicare Advantage, requires enrollees to get their hospital and doctor care within a network of providers. In return, they get extra benefits, such as dental care, which are not included in the regular Medicare program. Under regular Medicare, called fee-for-service, the beneficiary can see any doctor or hospital where Medicare payments are accepted.

Rosenblatt also discusses other funding mechanisms under consideration, including: capping the federal income tax deduction for health insurance; creating a special tax dedicated for healthcare; and finding ways to make the system more efficient.
For an interesting look at the key health care strategy players, read “On Health, President Takes Team Approach” by Robert Pear and Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times. The authors focus on the following members of Obama’s health care reform team: Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, the President’s nominee for Secretary of HHS; Nancy-Ann DeParle, counselor to the president and director of the White House Office for Health Reform, is not subject to Senate confirmation; Peter R. Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, “a dominant voice on health policy within the administration” ; Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel, an oncologist and medical ethicist and “kibitzer-in-chief on health policy”; Melody C. Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House, and Lawrence H. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council
In her Wall St. Journal article, “Tough Questions Dog Health-Care Overhaul,” Laura Meckler focuses on Obama’s proposed “system in which people could buy insurance through a government-organized marketplace, where private plans and a new government-run plan would compete.” and notes:

If the government were to require businesses to offer insurance, it would have to set a standard for what counts as insurance. Would a bare-bones plan with limited coverage qualify? Businesses and others would likely wince at the idea of government setting standards for the benefits they must offer….During his campaign, Mr. Obama proposed that large businesses be required to offer coverage or pay into a fund, while small businesses that offer coverage would get a tax credit…Many Democrats insist that there be a public option. Some say it would provide a test for whether Americans prefer a government-run system similar to what exists in Canada. But opponents say it would skew the playing field because government will always be able to undercut private insurers’ prices.

What I crave most as a health insurance consumer is simplicity. I don’t want to be what the insurance companies call “an educated consumer,” who has to spend a lot of time reading their brochures and making cafeteria-style decisions about my “benefit options” based on their constantly changing coverage and too often dishonored promises. I want everything covered — a little card that guarantees that any illness or health issue that befalls me or my family will not entail ruinous medical expenses, and requires nothing more than a modest co-payment from me for anything. It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask for in the most prosperous nation in world history.
Right now, I have to believe goverment is likely to be the more credible provider of such a promise, since private insurers have only cut benefits and raised prices in recent years. Theoretically, at least, it should be possible for insurance companies to compete on the basis of who can provide the most affordable insurance that truly covers every illness, without the expensive “optional” add-ons like “cancer insurance” private providers offer today. If one of the big companies had the guts to offer such a truly comprehensive package, I suspect they would bury the competition.
Health security for millions of Americans has always been discussed as something separate from “national security,” and I sometimes wonder if that’s a key reason why comprehensive health insurance that covers everyone and every illness has been such a tough sell. When it comes to saving the lives of Americans, the failures of our health care delivery system have probably done more real damage to our citizens than all of the terrorists threatening America put together. Yet it’s politically easier to dump $5 billion a week into the Iraq quagmire than it is to spend about the same amount– $250 billion a year — to provide coverage for all of the uninsured (American Enterprise Institute maximum estimate, quoted in Rosenblatt’s article).
The same is true to some extent for the relationship of health care reform to the success of the economic reform package. As Governor Jennifer Granholm noted on MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Sunday, Ontario produced more cars than Michigan last year — for the first time ever. Conservatives can’t blame it on their traditional boogeymen, taxes and regulation, since Canada has more of both. As Granholm explained about the auto companies, “They were going there because of health care.” Ontario’s edge for auto companies is due to Canada’s more efficient health care system, which makes cars produced there less expensive than in the U.S., where health insurance adds $1200-1500 to the price of every car, according to Granholm. Regardless of the specific policies at issue, clearly health care reform should be pitched more assetively as a critical component of both economic and national security.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then there’s this howler:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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