Capitol's Age Pyramid

Obama benefits in having Palin as his foil

American voters have for decades now sent their presidents to Washington in hopes of delivering some mortal blow to the status quo. Once in office, it’s hard for any president to fully embody the reform that a restive electorate may have hoped for. But it’s considerably easier if you can contrast yourself with an adversary who embodies the kind of outdated politics, ideological rigidity or divisiveness that repelled those voters in the first place.

Promises are always broken, because they are unrealistic, made in campaigns when hyperbole and disingenuousness are standard

But since the first minutes after the shootings, Ms. Palin (and not Mr. Boehner) has again been the most-talked-about Republican in the country. And Ms. Palin represents exactly the kind of culturally conservative critique of Mr. Obama that her Washington colleagues would like very much to play down at the moment. Her grievances are based less in the particulars of policy than they are in the caricatures and cultural divisions of the last political era — effete Easterners versus rugged Westerners, wine-drinkers versus beer-pounders, Ivy League lawyers versus Bible-brandishing activists.

Recovering

Among Women in Congress, a Bond of Friendship

Doctors Call Giffords’s Progress Remarkable


On Friday, CNN reported that doctors might remove her breathing tube as early as today. Doctors have said the breathing tube has been left in place as a precautionary measure and that Ms. Giffords is breathing on her own.In response to a reporter’s question about whether Ms. Giffords’s recovery might be considered miraculous, Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., the hospital’s chief of neurosurgery said, “Miracles happen every day, and in medicine, we like to attribute them to what we do or what others do around us. A lot of medicine is outside our control. We are wise to acknowledge miracles.”

Girl’s Death Hits Home for Obama


President Obama is not known for showing a surplus of emotion in public, but toward the end of his speech at the University of Arizona, he paused for 51 seconds and appeared to gather himself. he audience was on its feet. Mr. Obama had just laid down a stark and powerful gauntlet, challenging the country to live up to the expectations of 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, whose death on Saturday was an emotional punch to the gut for so many people across the country. Among them, apparently, is the president himself, whose younger daughter, Sasha, was born three months before Christina.

Blood libel

In the wake of the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, many liberal talking-heads and pundits have castigated conservatives talking-heads and pundits for their vitriol. In response to such attacks, Sarah Palin pushed back today, calling attacks on her as "blood libel."

Blood libel has a particular historical meaning: it is the anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish myth that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood to make matzoh. In modern days, the meaning has been expanded. Yet even the ADL, which tends to be rather conservative, commented that "While the term 'blood-libel' has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history."

Others have been less restrained in their criticism of the half-term former Alaska governor.



President of Jewish Funds for Justice Simon Greer said in a statement that "the term 'blood libel' is not a synonym for 'false accusation.' It refers to a specific falsehood perpetuated by Christians about Jews for centuries, a falsehood that motivated a good deal of anti-Jewish violence and discrimination. Unless someone has been accusing Ms. Palin of killing Christian babies and making matzoh from their blood, her use of the term is totally out-of-line. In the past two months, Ms. Palin and Glenn Beck, the most well-known media personalities on Fox News, have abused two of the most tragic episode in the history of the Jewish people: the Holocaust and the blood libel," Greer said, adding "in addition, Roger Ailes, the head of the Fox News channel, referred to the executives at NPR as 'Nazis.' Perhaps the popular news channel has such an ingrained victim mentality that it identifies with one of the most persecuted minorities in human history. But the Jewish community does not appreciate their identification, which only serves to denigrate the very real pain so many Jews have suffered because of anti-Semitic violence. It is clear that Fox News has a Jewish problem."

Irked Liberal Lion

“If you widen the lens, the public is being sold a big lie — that our problems owe to unions and the size of government and not to fraud and deregulation and vast concentration of wealth. Obama’s failure is that he won’t challenge this Republican narrative, and give people a story that helps them connect the dots and understand where we’re going.”

I agree with that assessment. Why the President won't fight is a mystery: yes, he's a conciliator, not a pugilist; his game is basketball, not football. He gives some speeches where he calls his opponents hostage-takers. But he does fight.



“Obama had a chance to reboot the bailout,” he says. “He could have said to the bankers, ‘If you want more, you’ve got to put a cap on salaries, you’ve got to agree to modify X number of mortgages.’ ” Mr. Reich sees a parallel with his former boss, Mr. Clinton, and draws no comfort from the comparison. Confronted with a muscular Republican majority in the House in 1994, Mr. Clinton mastered triangulation, which is to say he sailed into a sea neither Republican nor Democratic. It was a strategic masterstroke, but he threw overboard some liberal founding stones. “I found myself truly impressed by how quickly Clinton moved to the putative center,” says Mr. Reich, a touch archly. Mr. Reich sees President Obama taking a similar tack. This argument drives the president and his advisers to distraction.

Yes, he has accomlished a good number of things, and his advisers point to: health care and financial reform, to extended unemployment benefits and to the stimulus bills (which liberal economists criticized as too small) that let city and state governments avoid tens of thousands of layoffs. They will put their accounting up against that of their critics.

At the same time that Reich and Krugman call Obama too timid, the Republicans call him a dangerous radical socialist Kenyan.

Bill Daley's Real Agenda: Obama's Reelection

Excellent piece by Jonathan Alter

New rulers, new rules

GOP bends its own new House rules: Just hours after taking control of the House, Republicans passed a sweeping set of rules promising transparency and reform. But the new majority is already showing these promises aren’t exactly set in stone. After calling for bills to go through a regular committee process, the bill that would repeal the health care law will not go through a single committee. Despite promising a more open amendment process for bills, amendments for the health care repeal will be all but shut down. After calling for a strict committee attendance list to be posted online, Republicans backpedaled and ditched that from the rules. They promised constitutional citations for every bill but have yet to add that language to early bills.


plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

As Republicans prepare to decide Michael Steele’s fate, the party has no agenda, a Palin management problem, and a resurgent president. As Republicans prepare to decide Michael Steele’s fate, the party has no agenda, a Palin management problem, and a resurgent president. Matt Latimer on the GOP’s pre-2012 punch list. Next Friday, a week after the swearing-in of a new GOP congressional majority, the Republican National Committee will select a chairman to guide the party through the 2012 elections. At first blush, the lofty post might sound like the political version of a “Yogi Bear” movie: No thinking required. After all, aren’t we fresh off an election where Republicans, despite massive unpopularity, delivered a thrashing so thorough that they won everything but both showcases on The Price Is Right? Then again, just ask President Bob Dole how quickly political fortunes can turn. If the new GOP chairman is savvy, he or she will see ample reasons to be nervous this year, for signs are aplenty that 2011 might be for the GOP what college football has been for University of Michigan fans: a baffling, dream-crushing headache that makes you wish the whole thing would end early.

On the other hand ...

Budget antics more theater than reality show. As if it were difficult to predict, the Republican radicals have a bigger bark than bit. Hours after taking control of the House of Representatives, Republican lawmakers were already rolling back pledges to slash spending -- a rollback that may actually be the best thing they can do for the economy. It's very different to govern than it is to campaign. The wonder is that people are stupid enough to believe the lies that politicians spew during political campaigns: change, leaner government, no earmarks, lower taxes, bipartisanship. Hooey.


I did see a bozo that is a new Represenative from Florida, Allen West, last night on the LawrenceO'Donnell show, The Last Word. West, whom LO quoted making disparaging and acrimonious remarks about the President, criticized President Obama for flying into Afghanistan in a darkened Air Force One. West believes that troops deserve bold leadership, and flying in a darkened airplane is not bold leadership. This minnow is a wingnut, a whacko, an amazing example of an idiot rising above his level of competency by appealing to people's baser instincts. He's a Tea Bagger, to boot. Yet when LO pressed him on details of his budget cutting proposals, this newly-sworn-in representative sounded as if he'd been in politics a long time. He is a retired military, a colonel, or something. Bozo.

A new chief, an old constitution

Two stories illustrate today's politics: a new Presidential chief of staff changes the tenor of the White House, and the new Republican majority plays games.

Daley to Become Next White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley will bring an outsider’s voice and a business background as the president continues an overhaul of his staff. Commerce Secretary under Bill Clinton, high-ranking JP Morgan executive, brother of retiring Chicago mayor, this is a well-conected individual that gets some plaudits.

Before Preamble, a Textual Dispute Things did not begin auspiciously for the reading of the Constitution from the floor of the House. Exactly why the Constitution needs to be read in the House is unclear, other, that is, than as political theater.

An Annotated Guide to the Constitution

In the middle

From the left: Howard Dean endorses Daley for chief of staff, rips White House. At a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor, Dean refused to single out any administration officials for criticism, but said Obama would be better served by staff that has not spent so much time in Washington. Noting that many officials are "either out of the White House or going," Dean blasted Obama's current officials who he says have treated the left wing of the Democratic Party with "contempt." Seems the Doctor's feelings are quite hurt.

From the right: Bachmann mum on presidential run Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann won’t say whether she’s running for president, and insists the focus should be on making sure President Barack Obama isn’t elected to a second term in 2012. This wingnut run for President? Oy vay. Yet, she has supporter, as unbelievable as that seems, to me.

So the left castigates him, the right castigates him; seems he's doing okay.

Right wing flexes muscle

3 stories offer glimpses at the Republican Party early in 2011, the year it assumes some governmental power.

Darrell Issa, soon to be launching at least half a dozen investigations into the Obama administration's first two years, offers to have business tell him what laws and rules they it would like to have repealed.

Companies spend millions of dollars each year complaining to Congress about burdensome laws and regulations, pressing their concerns in public campaigns and in private meetings. They rarely wait for invitations. Last month a senior House Republican, Representative Darrell Issa of California, nevertheless dispatched letters to 150 companies, trade groups and research organizations asking them to identify federal regulations that are restraining economic recovery and job growth. Mr. Issa, incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the concerns of businesses had been ignored by the Obama administration as it pursued what he described as an unprecedented regulatory expansion.

He's offering them a rebate on lobbying, in effect. Indiana's governor, Mitch Daniels, has his own agenda: burnish his credentials as a budget hawk in advance of launching his own presidential bid.

Congressional Republicans have spent much of the last decade voting for tax cuts and spending increases, all the while giving speeches decrying the deficit. Mr. Daniels, who took office in 2005, has reduced the number of state workers by 18 percent and held spending growth below inflation. He has raised the sales tax to help make up for a property tax cut. Largely as a result, Indiana finds itself in better fiscal shape than many other states.

Reduce the state's work force, increase unemployment, and cut one tax whilst raising another: balm for the gilead?