The Gaggle

NEWSWEEK Roundtable: How Obama Gets Back on Track

2010-02-09T21:54:33Z

There’s no shortage of advice for President Obama about what he should do substantively and stylistically to regain the momentum that he squandered in his thus far futile quest to achieve health care reform. While the Congress was busy indulging Max Baucus and Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman, the public’s priorities shifted away from health care and toward creating jobs and curbing the deficit.

In the grip of a recession, government is the spender of last resort, and the administration shouldn’t take its foot off the gas pedal now. Short-term deficits are needed; long-term deficits must be tackled. The Republican Party and the Tea Party movement have cleverly conflated today’s deficits with tomorrow’s, scaring voters about impending doom if we don’t immediately get our fiscal house in order.

My colleague, Evan Thomas, faults Obama for not being honest with the American people about what’s needed.Bob Samuelson, Newsweek’s economics columnist, writes about “the massive candor gap, “ led by Obama but also implicating most leaders of both parties. If there’s no pain, there’s no gain in the eyes of those who take the courageous view -- raise taxes, cut benefits – when they’re not the ones who have to face the voters.

The history of high-minded candor in politics is generally not rewarded. Democratic standard-bearer Adlai Stevenson was told he had the votes of all the thinking people, to which he responded, “Yes, but I need a majority.” Jimmy Carter called upon the American people to sacrifice in order to lessen dependence on foreign oil. He lost his bid for reelection to Ronald Reagan, who said there was enough oil under second base at Yankee Stadium, the kind of applause lines that voters want to hear.

I admire and respect my colleagues, but here’s where I differ. I find Obama the most honest president we’ve had since Carter. He understands the long-term threat the deficit poses, and that the first step in reducing the deficit is to get health care costs under control. Republicans after historically opposing Medicare have become its protectors, opposing the modest steps within the Democrats health care bill to restrain Medicare costs. I wish the chattering class would shine a brighter light on the GOP’s hypocrisy and highlight the hard-won aspects of reform that are positive. Instead, they chide the administration for not doing more about tort reform (which they should), and insist that it costs too much to extend insurance coverage to thirty million uninsured, even though the non-partisan congressional budget office says the legislation would reduce the deficit.

How about calculating the cost of doing nothing? A story in today’s New York Times points out that the number of uninsured people could rise to 58 million by 2014, which translates into billions of unpaid care provided by hospitals, which cannot sustain a business model where they are the insurers of last resort.

My colleague Jacob Weisberg is right when he says we’ve met the enemy, and the enemy is us, that Americans want more services from government than they’re willing to pay for. But casting aspersions on the voters is never a good idea. A better strategy for Obama would be to explain to the American people what he’s doing and why. He talked to us like grownups about race when his campaign was threatened, and about the characteristics of a just war when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

I find myself feeling nostalgic for Ross Perot with his charts and pointer, a style of presentation that the critics pooh-poohed and everyday Americans loved. Yes, everyday Americans, a phrase that my other colleague Steve Tuttle finds condescending when Obama uses it, yet Sarah Palin seemed to invoke to good effect in her keynote speech at last weekend’s Tea Party convention in Nashville.

After mocking Obama’s reliance on a teleprompter, Palin was caught by a zoom-in camera using an aid familiar to everyday Americans -- writing on the inside of her hand the answer to the first question she knew would be posed. It was about her priorities. Her crib sheet: Energy…tax…lift American spirits…budget cuts (with budget crossed out). My advice to Obama – and here is where I agree with Tuttle, Newsweek’s self-described cracker, Obama needs to keep it simple. He could learn from Palin, a few phrases that fit on the palm of his hand. How about, “It’s the economy stupid and don’t forget about health care.”

Yes, Virginia, There Are Republican Critics of Sarah Palin

2010-02-09T20:45:24Z

Fred Kaplan, Slate's "War Stories" columnist, is usually right on, but his column on Sarah Palin yesterday was a bit of a dud. Charging right out of the gate, Kaplan asks: "Are there any Republican grown-ups out there, and, if there are, will they ever start coming to the aid of their party? That sentence could segue into any number of topics, but the one at hand is Sarah Palin."

Where to start? Certainly, many liberals would be delighted to see a phalanx of moderate Republicans condemning Palin—just as many conservatives were delighted to see moderate Democrats such as Evan Bayh lashing out at President Obama in the wake of Scott Brown's victory in the special election for senator in Massachusetts. But Palin's rhetoric—and that of like-minded leaders—seems to be making political hay for the GOP, at least in the short term.

More to the point, though, Kaplan is simply wrong: there are "Republican grown-ups" who haven't been shy about criticizing Palin. Let's start with the team at FrumForum (né New Majority) who have been such frequent critics that Alex Knepper has taken to anticipating backlash in his posts ("The next time I say something negative about Sarah Palin and her Baghdad Bobs tell me to 'go back to the Huffington Post' . . . ). They were even at the tea-party convention, filing tepid to critical dispatches about Palin from Nashville. But that's hardly the only example. Gingrich revolutionary turned MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said yesterday morning that "she keeps lowering the bar for herself" and that top Republicans were increasingly impatient with her "lack of substance." Looking a little further back, one of the nation's highest-profile moderate Republicans, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, took a hard swipe at Palin's global-warming stance in December. And conservative pundits in the media have been criticizing her for months, from Paul Mingeroff of the influential conservative blog Power Line to Kathleen Parker, the Washington Post columnist who unequivocally attacked Palin as unqualified to run for vice president during the 2008 campaign.

Kaplan could make the case that elected members of the GOP leadership such as Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, Michael Steele, and Mitt Romney ought to be out front in promoting an alternative to Palin's ideas. Or he could take to task the anonymous Republicans Scarborough cites, who are unhappy but haven't spoken publicly. But it's incorrect to say that no one is talking.

Perhaps the greater problem here is a rhetorical one, tied to the structural weaknesses of political journalism. The "where are the moderate Republicans?" argument is just as weak as the old canard about how moderate Muslims are failing to speak out against Islamist extremists—it's not that moderates aren't out there, but all the attention goes to the latest Osama bin Laden tape. If Kaplan truly wants to encourage a Republican alternative to Palin, he might be better served by helping to amplify the voices that are out there now, rather than stifling them by pretending they don't exist.

Michelle Obama's Childhood Obesity Plan: Reaching Out to America's Moms

2010-02-09T20:38:19Z

When Michelle Obama became first lady, she stressed that her "No. 1 job" would be "first mom." Following through on that focus, today at the White House, she elevated her personal concern for her own kids' health and eating habits into a massive national campaign aimed at solving the U.S. epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation.

Calling the issue "one of the most serious threats to their future," Obama noted that childhood obesity rates have tripled in the last three decades and that the excess weight kids are carrying these days increases the risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, and asthma. As a result, Obama said, she had "great concern" that too many of today's kids were on track to live shorter and less healthy lives than their parents, even though the problem is "so imminently solvable."

Read the rest of the story on the Human Condition blog.

Think Congress Suffers From Inaction? Take a Look at Canada

2010-02-09T19:20:27Z

A Mountie outside the Canadian Parliament last winter. Snow doesn't stop Canada, but politics? That's another story. (Photo Credit: David Boily - AFP/Getty Images)

As snowmaggedon continues to wreak havoc on the Capitol, the House has suspended all votes through Friday. Congress taking an entire snow week is rife with opportunities to mock the government’s uncanny ability to use any and all excuses to justify inaction. One editorial cartoon, a drawing of our nation’s capital blanketed in snow, comes with the tagline: “where every day is a snow day.”

But if you want to talk about really egregious government shutdowns explained with implausible excuses, just take a look at our neighbors to the north (incidentally, this Gaggler's home country): using the Olympics as a partial justification, the Canadian Parliament is in the middle of a two-month shutdown.

For those of you who have gotten behind on your Canadian politics, here’s a basic rundown. Prime Minster Steven Harper, who leads the Conservative Party, was facing a lot of difficult issues: an inquiry over maltreatment of Afghan detainees, economic woes hosting the Olympics. So he announced in December that he was basically shutting down, or proroguing, Parliament until March 3, 2010, the day after the Olympics ends. And, when they come back to session next month, the agenda is basically reset: any bill that was on the table is done and gone away with. This has lead to numerous prorogation protests across the country, despite Canadians being generally known for their politeness. A one-week shutdown due to a massive snowstorm isn’t looking so insane, now is it?

This is the second time that Harper has prorogued Parliament. The last time, in December 2008, he did so “to avoid a no-confidence vote and blunt the threat of an opposition coalition,” according to Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail.

As a Canadian citizen, I generally don’t like to slam on my native land; I’ll definitely root for Team Canada come this Friday. But in terms of ridiculous government deadlock and partisanship, unfortunately, we have already claimed the gold medal.

Gallup Poll: Health-Care Reform Now America's Most Divisive Issue

2010-02-09T17:40:07Z

Today in public-opinion polls that shock no one, Gallup has a new survey showing American approval of Obama’s handling of health-care reform is down to an all-time low. A mere 36 percent of us think the president is doing a good job on the issue.

But, once again, dig a little deeper and you find some interesting stuff. Here’s what I’ve got:

First, despite months of delays, deadlock, and general grousing about the death of health-care reform, Democratic support for Obama’s handling of the issue remains weirdly high. It’s at 74 percent, just 3 points lower than it was back in August, when health-care reform looked much more like an inevitability.

This really shocks me, given all the hand-wringing over the future of the Democrats and their post-Brown blunders that have occupied the liberal blogosphere as of late. Can we chalk up the solid Democratic support to some serious party loyalty? Perhaps consistent numbers are symptomatic of the fact that most Americans don’t seem to follow the health-care debate closely (Pew says only 32 percent knew that no Republican senators supported the bill). I don't know how to explain why Democratic support has not wavered, but this poll definitely indicates Obama has not actually lost much ground within his party on health-care reform.

Second interesting point: Republican support for Obama’s handling of health-care reform is at a mere 7 percent. The gap between Republican and Democratic support—67 points—is the largest for all issues that Gallup polled on, which includes terrorism (52-point gap on POTUS support) and the economy (56-point gap).

Again, this is a shift from August: back then, the economy was the most polarizing issue, with a 71-point gap between Democrats and Republicans. More than any other foreign or domestic policy, health-care reform has the dubious distinction of the most polarizing policy in terms of how you view Obama.

These numbers help me understand the Republican opposition strategy, which, ever since Obama announced the health-care summit this weekend, has basically consisted of asking the president to shelve his bill and start from scratch. Politically, there’s no gain for Republicans to make by playing to the middle on health-care reform: Republican voters flat-out do not support the Obama approach.

Note that the polling was done early last week, from Feb. 1 to 3, before Obama announced his plan for the summit. So we should definitely be keeping our eyes out for a post-announcement poll to get a sense of whether, in the public-opinion sphere, that changes the debate.

A GOP Plan for Deficit Reduction

2010-02-09T14:00:32Z

I've been hard on congressional Republicans recently for pandering to voters' ignorance by offering politically appealing but irresponsible slogans instead of a credible conservative vision of how to meet America's challenges, even those they harp on Obama for failing to address, such as our rising budget deficits. So, it is only fair that I praise Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin for coming forward with a proposal that could actually reduce long-term deficits.

Ryan would do so by essentially eliminating Medicare (and privatizing Social Security). Everyone under 55 today, would not get covered by the U.S. government. Instead they would get vouchers with which to buy health insurance upon turning 65. You can quickly surmise what this would lead to: insurers, with a customer base that is high-risk, would either charge rates well above what the vouchers provide, and/or offer only bare-bones service for the cost of a voucher. The result: seniors who are uninsured or underinsured. Ultimately, seniors would die as a result, as younger Americans who lack insurance do now.

This is a conservative vision of government, and you cannot expect Democrats to embrace it. But if the Republicans ran on such a proposal and won control of Congress and the White House they could claim a legitimate mandate to enact it.

Alas, Republicans are all but certain not to run any such program. The attack ads by Democrats, liberal interest groups, maybe even the AARP, practically write themselves: "Republicans want to kick grandma out of the hospital."

The fact is, as Ryan admits, there is rationing in every health-care system, including the one we have now, and he is simply proposing a different regime, which would save money on entitlement spending by yanking the social safety net out from under anyone unlucky enough to turn in 65 in America after 2020. This is a legitimate alternative vision of how government should address health-care costs to the one Democrats have put forward, and it would be even more unpopular.

So, Democrats are already criticizing the plan, and Republicans are keeping their distance from it. Any proposal that upsets the status quo─whether it is by raising taxes on anyone, changing anyone's health-insurance provider, or reducing their benefits─is easy to turn the American people against. Americans want entitlement reform, tax cuts, their entitlements protected, their coverage expanded, better public schools and more affordable colleges and a balanced budget.

Propose anything that forces a real choice between these mutually exclusive goals and you get filleted for it. Unfortunately the Republicans have learned all too well that as long as they are in the minority they are better off sticking to pandering demagoguery. One could argue that Ryan's plan isn't really workable. If it was enacted and the vouchers proved inadequate for good insurance coverage wouldn't seniors, with their massive voting power, simply get Congress to increase the vouchers? Then we'd be back where we started in terms of deficits. But Ryan deserves credit for thinking seriously about the problems and proposing a real answer as to what trade-offs Republicans would like to make, at least in theory, if they were in power.

Of course, coming into power also can force you to put forward such proposal. In New Jersey, newly elected Republican Gov. Chris Christie has proposed an austere budget. From the Star-Ledger:

The proposals would require workers and retirees at all levels of government and local school districts to contribute to their own health care costs, ban part-time workers at the state and local levels from participating in the underfunded state pension system, cap sick leave payouts for all public employees and constitutionally require the state to fully fund its pension obligations each year.

We'll see how New Jerseyans react to get a sense of whether they actually embrace the vision of government that low taxes and balanced budgets would mean. More likely, they will complain about this, replace Christie with a Democrat, and then blame that guy for raising their taxes (or letting their property taxes go up) in order to prevent precisely these kinds of drastic measures.

Statistics GOP Criticized Were Originally Touted by Bush Administration

2010-02-09T11:30:57Z

Maybe it's time to stop some of the name-calling over counterterrorism policy and start checking the facts. As the debate over Obama administration counterterrorism policies has heated up in the wake of the failed Christmas Day underpants airplane bombing, prominent Republicans, ranging from leading senators to a former press secretary for George W. Bush, have attacked the current administration for claiming that hundreds of terrorist suspects had been successfully prosecuted through the civilian court system during Bush's presidency. But it turns out that the Obama administration's claims do appear to be well documented—assuming that an official budget request sent to Congress by Bush's last attorney general was truthful itself.

For the full story, visit Declassfied.

Murtha: A Macho Man Who Helped a Woman Gain Power

2010-02-08T22:25:29Z

John Murtha was Nancy Pelosi's friend and mentor, and his backing her for leader over Steny Hoyer, a longtime insider player in the Democratic caucus, gave her the street cred she needed to win as the first woman to hold that high a position in what was an old boys' club. A gruff former combat Marine officer, Murtha provided political cover for Pelosi and other left-wing Democrats in their opposition to the Iraq War. After having initially supported the war, Murtha became an outspoken opponent, calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2005. As a once-reliable Bush administration ally, his defection signaled the growing disaffection with Bush's war policies. Murtha's long history of pro-military votes and close alliance with the military helped rebuff Republican charges that Pelosi and other antiwar Democrats were endangering national security.

The two were an unlikely pair─the hawkish Murtha and the liberal Pelosi─but they had such a close bond that Pelosi has been accused of dragging her feet in looking into ethics violations leveled at Murtha for sweetheart deals that benefited his district. As chairman or ranking member of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee for 20 years, Murtha earmarked millions in congressional spending for defense projects, a practice that beginning in 2007 came under unwelcome scrutiny after almost two decades of business-as-usual. Murtha was proud of the wheeling and dealing he did, and he would exchange Democratic votes for Republican support for his pet projects. He said, "dealmaking is what Congress is all about." He was unapologetic about the money he steered to the folks back home in blue-collar western Pennsylvania, saying─correctly─that it created jobs in local industries and health care. He was as solid and old-style in his cultural values as his district, which saw its heyday back in the days when coal mines and steel mills were the heart of American industry.

When the Democrats took control of the House in the 2006 election, Pelosi wanted Murtha, her loyal lieutenant, to serve as majority leader, the No. 2 position. But Democrats, wary of his authoritarian style and cavalier attitude toward the new ethics environment, chose Hoyer instead. Some thought Pelosi's endorsement was a pro-forma show of loyalty, that she understood the risk in elevating Murtha's profile after his earlier brush with ethics. In 1980, Murtha was caught in an FBI sting operation saying on tape when offered a $50,000 bribe, "We do business for a while. Maybe I'll be interested and maybe I won't." While he wasn't charged in the case, instead of scarring him the incident seemed to leave him with a sense that he could still play by the old rules, even as they were changing all around him. A larger-than-life personality in a Congress where few people stand out above the crowd, Murtha will be missed by the military he championed, the constituents he served sometimes too well, and the woman whose leadership skills he recognized and legitimized, and whose loyalty he never had reason to question.

Rep. John Murtha Dies at 77

2010-02-08T20:32:43Z

Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha died this afternoon at a hospital in Virginia, following complications related to gall bladder surgery he underwent in January. Murtha, 77, had served in the House for 36 years. The first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress and chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Murtha wielded enormous power over defense related issues and boldly sought earmarks that benefited his district.

For more on Murtha, his life, achievements and brushes with scandal, The Washington Post has a comprehensive obit.

Forget the Crib Notes, It’s Palin’s Unsavvy That Really Worries Republicans

2010-02-08T18:53:17Z

Palin 2012 buzz is again in the air, this time after her punchy and oft-replayed address to the national Tea Party Convention on Saturday. The fallout from the speech has been predictable. Her base unified firmly while the left calculates just how big a threat she’ll pose in November and 2012. Meanwhile, the cable and Web echo chambers have honed in on the delectable story of some crib notes that Palin conspicuously wrote on her hand to remind herself of prepared talking points.

Embarassing, perhaps, especially after Palin knicked Obama in the same hour for also trying to appear candid by reading from a teleprompter. But it’s far from a fatal gaffe. There was much more included in Palin’s speech and her general self-promoting strategy to pick apart, and Republican politicos aren’t happy with any of the above.

Since Palin appeared on the national stage, her strategy has been Palin First, promoting herself and firing up her base without much regard for paying her dues to the rest of the party. She has hand-selected which candidates she’ll endorse, even though the vast majority could be helped with a Palin nod or rally appearance. She has also made Washington in general (which includes congressional Republicans) a frequent target, even though most of those party heads would be vital for building broad party support behind a Palin candidacy. And as I mused from Nashville, her unwillingness to move to the conservative center offers little promise for uniting the Republican base behind a single candidate or cause this year.

Two Republican Hill staffers say that their bosses are concerned about Palin’s conduct, especially when the party has such good prospects for legislatively upsetting Democrats in November. “Twitter and Facebook are tools to promote yourself, but their not a way to build up party, which she could easily be doing,” says one staffer.

What's more, Palin apparently missed a golden opportunity Saturday night to define the tea-party movement, not as a fringe group of angry and unrealistic activists, but as a formidable burgeoning voice with real, concrete alternatives to the Democrat's agenda. But she didn’t. She filled her speech with applause lines and one-liner jabs, not a road map of specifics for a way forward.

In politics, it’s impossible to turn on a dime. Palin offers genuine hope and a real way for Republicans to unify, and so far, she’s the furthest ahead in the pack for 2012. But her time as a free agent is quickly running out, leaving much of her party wondering when she'll start hitting for the team.

Study Confirms: Millennials Are Apathetic

2010-02-08T18:36:50Z

That is not an article from The Onion; it’s actual, real news.

The Pew Research Center has some new, interesting numbers up on public opinion and health-care reform. The general takeaway is that, while the same numbers of Americans support reform, they’re increasingly pessimistic about its odds of passing. It’s notable that, despite all the roadblocks in the legislative process, the same number of Americans generally stand behind it.

What I found most interesting was a section on millennials and health care—partially because I’m a millennial who covers health care, partially because it reveals many interesting schisms in my generation’s support for reform. Here’s the basic rundown from Pew:

Millennials' support for the health care proposals before Congress has been lukewarm at best . . . Small percentages of young people expect their own health care or insurance coverage to improve if health care legislation passes . . . Millennials have largely tuned out of the health care debate: They are far less likely than those in older age groups to report they have heard a lot about the issue.

This is a little strange because, as the report points out, millennials may stand to gain the most from health-care reform, given that a third of us under 30 are not covered—compared with 12 percent of our baby-boomer parents. Moreover, millennials are actually the most likely demographic to support individual elements of the bill, such as universal coverage and a public option.

Another weird schism: millennials are the least likely to “very strongly favor” health-care reform, but they are the most likely to generally favor reform. So we kind of, sort of, care about health-care reform, but don’t feel too strongly either way: we’re also the least likely to “very strongly oppose” the issue, too.

So millennials stand to gain the most from health care and are most likely to support its core elements, yet are the least likely to know or really care about it. What exactly is going on here? A few things to consider:

Millennials do stand to gain the most in terms of access to affordability of insurance. But our medical costs are generally minuscule compared with those of our parents or grandparents; I can count on one hand the number of doctor's appointments I have had since graduating from college three years ago. Access to affordable insurance does not strike us as a giant gain; we are not generally paying that much to begin with.

The other issue, I think, is the way health insurance has been sold and positioned. In general, we talk about the outcome of health-care reform in two ways: the micro impact on individual citizens and the macro impact on health-care costs. Neither has excited millennials. As I said, the individual impact strikes us as unimpressive. The large-scale economic outcomes take a lot of effort to understand. They seem distant, probably to millennials and the rest of the population, and easy to lose sight of in a Twitter-size news cycle.

Instead, the more attractive part of health insurance for millennials, these poll numbers indicate, is the moral underpinnings of the bill: that all Americans ought to have access to insurance, that this is our responsibility as a nation. While 47 percent of millennials generally support health-care reform, 70 percent support the idea that all Americans should have access to affordable health insurance, the highest number for any demographic. Maybe we’re just young and idealistic, maybe we have genuinely different viewpoints than our parents; either way, that provision really strikes a chord with younger Americans. But the bill has not been sold that way—if it had, perhaps more millennials would strongly support health-care reform instead of the kind of, sort of, support we see now.

White House Casts Brennan in Unusual Political Role

2010-02-08T17:47:24Z

Michael Isikoff reports on the Declassified blog:

White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan played an unusual role Sunday when he swiped at congressional Republicans for bashing the administration's handling of the Christmas Day bombing suspect.

Normally, it is the White House political aides such as David Axelrod and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, both seasoned veterans of the 2008 Obama campaign, who take the offensive against the president's GOP critics on the Sunday talk shows.

But this week, it was Brennan─a professional U.S. intelligence official who now serves on the president's national-security staff─who played the attack-dog role. While national-security aides─like Richard Clarke after 9/11─have been used in the past to rebut political attacks by providing "background" briefings, and Brennan himself did the Sunday talk-show circuit immediately after the Christmas Day bombing─it is extremely rare for a White House aide in his position to so directly target the president's critics, much less members of Congress by name, according to several former White House staffers and congressional staffers.

Read the entire post here.

The White House Health-Care Summit: Jedi Move or Giant Fail?

2010-02-08T16:08:46Z

Jon Stewart has said on a couple of occasions that he can’t tell if Obama is like a Jedi master, three moves ahead of the rest of us all the time, or if this health-care thing is kicking his ass. It’s unclear which category yesterday’s announcement of a televised, bipartisan health-care-reform summit at the White House falls in to.

On first blush it seems like a smart move. Rather than letting Republicans snipe on the sidelines, slowly killing the bill, Obama is bringing them in, squarely implicating them in the legislation’s fate. Keep your enemies close and all that. Republicans will get what they’ve been clamoring for─a transparent set of negotiations, live on TV. They’ll be able to raise their issues with the bill and be forced to articulate their alternatives, rather than just offering blanket opposition. But (and for Republicans this is a big but) they won’t be starting from scratch. They’ll be working to alter the bills that have already passed the House and Senate.

Congressional Democrats should be pleased with this move. For weeks they’ve been publicly pleading for more advice and direction from the administration. The problem for the White House, though, is that it’s difficult to imagine, after all these months of debate, that there’s a solution here that the GOP is willing to sign on to. And Republicans have already discovered that uniform opposition is working well for them as a political strategy. Regardless of how productive the White House forum is, there's little incentive for Republicans to sign on. Politically, they look to gain significantly more if reform dies than if it passes with their approval. So where does that leave the bill?

In the Jedi master scenario, the public sees the president and Democrats acting in good faith, pointing out where Republican ideas have been incorporated and explaining the benefits of the bill. The openness of the discussion counteracts fears that the bill is rife with backroom deals. The public opinion is revived. When GOPers continue to withhold support, they simply look obstructionist. The president and his party feel comfortable that they have the public’s consent to move forward with the House passing the Senate bill and making alterations through reconciliation. By bringing Republicans inside the tent and trying to deal with their objections publicly, Obama effectively neutralizes them and passes a bill in a manner that prompts only minimal backlash. Point goes to Team Jedi.

In the butt-kicking scenario, the GOP scores by having a forum to rail on the bill and point out where their ideas have been rejected. The talkfest produces no tangible results and confirms voter perceptions that D.C. is broken, incapable of leadership and innovation. Already skittish moderate Democrats feel increasingly nervous and just want the bill to go away. Liberal Democrats feel sidelined, their ideas marginalized, and their motivation for passing the bill dwindles. GOP leaders suggest the bill be tabled while the two parties work on alternatives. A disenchanted public, having watched the painful, slow, unproductive sausage-making process on TV, overwhelmingly agrees, but really they’ve lost interest and just want the discussion to end. Legislators move on to other issues. Health care dies. White House: Fail.

So what will this move turn out to be: Brilliant strategy or reform-ending spectacle? Is there space in between? I don’t have the answers, but I’m eager to find out.

Why Sarah Palin Can't Run for President

2010-02-07T04:12:44Z

In what was Sarah Palin’s highest-profile speech since her address to the Republican National Convention in 2008, the former veep candidate addressed the National Tea Party Convention Saturday evening in Nashville. From the start, she took aim at President Obama and Democrats in Congress. Yet she also referred frequently to the problems with Washington in general, an insinuation that Republicans might also be to blame for the problems she and tea partiers see with the federal government. The basis of her speech, as she put it, was simple: rein in government spending, be more firm on national security, and keep the government out of businesses and people’s lives. And not one person in the room didn’t think she was dead right.

Palin was clearly preaching to the choir, an audience of 1,100 hanging on her every word. In the style of the State of the Union, the speech included dozens of applause lines that brought the room to its feet. The crowd even broke into chants of “Sar-uh, U-S-A!” and later on, “Run, Sarah, run,” when discussing the prospects of a Sarah Palin presidency (a subject she skirted strategically). She even did something that Sarah Palin almost never does: take questions.

From a business sense, the speech was pure gold for Brand Palin. The former governor's speech to a friendly audience was broadcast nationally. She also made a pretty penny for it—rumored to be $100,000, which she vowed would go “right back to the cause” to her political-action committee, SarahPAC.

But business is business and politics is politics. Was tonight's speech helpful to building her appeal as a candidate? Hundreds who adore her streamed out of the ballroom with giggles, convinced that Sarah would be their gal in 2012. But the U.S. electorate, stubborn as it is, would disagree. Elections are won and lost in the middle, not on the extremes. Palin's fiery rebuke of Washington certainly firmed her base, but it did little to widen her appeal to moderates and independents, two groups without which she’d have a real tough time passing the threshold of electoral votes. (At one point, she even mocked the majority of voters who voted for President Obama, asking them, “How's that hopey-changey thing working for you now?”)

Which is to say that electorally speaking, tonight’s speech was a self-inflicted wound for Palin, offering ammo to opponents to argue that she’s simply too far right and too niche to win widespread support for national office. Speeches like this make the people who love Palin love her even more, and the people who don’t ever more certain why they don’t. In other words, Palin further polarized herself with the American public.

That may have been the point. With tonight’s speech, Palin cemented her role as the de facto head of the tea-party movement—but in a bigger sense, as the fearless warrior leading conservatives into battle in November and beyond. That might be where she’s most effective (and undoubtedly where the pay is best). Because at this point, it’s increasingly unlikely that she'll seek national office. Until now, the Palin guessing game has focused on whether she's running. On her current course, she simply couldn't win.

Blueprint of a Tea-Party Platform

2010-02-06T19:51:22Z

Tea partiers will be the first to tell you that they don’t intend to start a third party. They’re angry with Washington and with the behavior of both parties, but the way toward the nation’s salvation is to hold current leaders more accountable, not sending new ones to fill the ranks of Congress. “We just don’t have enough time to do that,” says Joyce Smith, a retiree from Ellijay, Ga.

Since the movement’s first-ever convention started in Nashville on Thursday, the pursuit for reporters has simply been to figure out the force of the movement and how formidable its voice will be in November. Partiers are uniformly against public spending and expansion of government, but it’s harder to figure out what exactly they’re for. Campaigning on "throwing the bums out" might help win an election, but it’s not a governing strategy. And until now, one of the movement’s biggest snags has been its inability to articulate concrete changes it would make to Washington and the federal government.

Until I met a man named Fred Everett, a tea-party patriot from Marietta, Ga. Cognizant of the movement’s lack of a concrete platform, he wrote one. He brought 500 copies to distribute to delegates as a proposed vision for the movement. It’s broken into two parts: fiscal reform and election reform—social programs aren’t included—and the idea is to get candidates to sign it as a pledge before they get tea-party support.

Under fiscal reform, Everett proposes curtailing all earmarks (“regardless of the importance of the legislation”) and balancing the budget by, as he says, sunsetting each and every federal program and “matching federal expenditures with federal revenues.” No exception, although one tiny caveat: no raising taxes. And on that note, he’d like to restructure the tax code to sharply reduce personal and corporate tax rates without shifting the income-tax burden from one income bracket to another. The result, he says, will “grow our national economic pie, create jobs, and increase federal tax revenues.”

Shifting to election reform, Everett thinks it’s unfair that incumbents have the upper hand to finance campaigns with taxpayer money when events coincide with their public duties. He thinks challengers should also get a weekly, federally funded town-hall meeting during the two months before each election. Once elected, lawmakers should be subject to term limits: eight years in the House and 12 years in the Senate. (Some tea partiers tell me the numbers should be higher, others say lower.) And last, to end gerrymandering, all House districts should be redrawn by an independent commission based on “democratic principles.”

Even though Everett’s contract offers some reasoned ideas, it’s a valid question whether candidates would sign on to something still so broad. But if they want tea-party support, they might have to. At yesterday’s press conference, convention organizer Judson Phillips laid down the gauntlet: “The tea party doesn’t endorse candidates; candidates endorse the tea party.”