Healthcare Reform is a Done Deal

This one goes out to David Frum.

You Don't Bend to The Opinion Polls, Yet You Call Yourself a Leader?

If Michael Gerson were an honest man, he would admit that his former colleague, David Frum, made a valid point when he argued that the Republican Party would have benefited from making itself a part of healthcare reform rather than positioning itself as an obstacle. The Republican Party's continuing avalanche of misinformation about the Affordable Care Act is a sight to behold - as was the manner in which a contrived "activity vs. inactivity" distinction was puffed up over the course of two short years into a legal theory that almost defeated the legislation. Having lost first at the legislature and then in the courts, what's a hack like Gerson to do but double down on his party's mendacity.

Gerson was, of course, an important cog in the wheel of the Bush Administration's misinformation machine. The machine for which popular opinion was a meaningless distraction. The public is starting to oppose war with Iraq? "Well then, let's get the invasion underway - the public always comes around when the bombs start dropping." The public opposes privatizing Social Security? "Well then, let's find a different word to use. How does 'private accounts' sound?" The public wants to know who met with Dick Cheney when he was forming the Administration's energy policy? "Well, it's tempting to scoff or laugh, but let's stick with stonewalling for now."

But when it's the other guy in office, Michael Gerson is suddenly all for government by plebiscite. Gerson can't even be honest about public sentiment. He whines about the Affordable Care Act, "Change came in the form of a law that a plurality of Americans opposed", but he knows full well that the opposition was in no small part a result of Republican demagoguery and misinformation. He wasn't the worst of the bunch, but he played an eager and happy role in that misinformation campaign.

He knew then, just as he knows now, that the only significant part of "Obamacare" that polled poorly was the individual mandate - that pretty much every other significant reform element, when people understood what they were asked about, received majority support. He focuses on the bill as a whole because it advances his narrative - the lie he and his party keep telling the nation, not because they believe that the public doesn't like "Obamacare" but because they're terrified that it will succeed.

Yes, that's right, they're terrified of its success. If they believed a tenth of their demagoguery, they would allow the ACA to come into full effect and let people see for themselves how bad it is. It's easy to repeal unpopular laws. They live in abject terror of a popular, successful reform that brings insurance to tens of millions of people who are presently uninsured or underinsured. So their effort has been to keep that from happening - and to tell as many lies as necessary to provoke public suspicion, concern and opposition.

Gerson has good company in today's Republican Party, because his position is essentially that of a coward. If you're trying to advance what you believe to be good policy, or at least the best policy you can implement given political reality, and run into a political headwind, you should abandon ship, run for the hills, scurry off the sinking ship like a terrified rat. Perhaps that's how he perceives his ex-boss's abandonment of immigration reform and Social Security reform, or McCain's abandonment of immigration reform, campaign finance reform, cap and trade.... The ultimate politician is a Mitt Romney, a guy with no core beliefs, a guy who's always chasing the latest poll, a guy who will discard his most significant (and arguably only) significant political achievement in the name of winning an election. I would like to say that nobody in their right mind would confuse Gerson's brand of cowardice with leadership but... while you can't fool all of the people all of the time, Gerson and friends are happy to shoot for 51%.

Listen to Gerson's platitudinous nonsense:

Obamacare matters in the current election not only because its future is at stake but for what its passage tells us about Obama as a leader. He is stubborn, which can be an admirable trait when applied to the public interest. But on health-care reform, Obama combined stubbornness with ideological predictability and partisan ruthlessness — imposing a very conventional liberalism in the Chicago way.

Obama is "stubborn" - a good thing if it means advancing Gerson's political agenda, really that of his party, but a terrible thing if it means advancing any other agenda. To pass legislation with a significant majority in the House, a 60 vote majority in the Senate, and then to reconcile minor differences in the bill based upon majority support in the Senate? That's anti-democratic. Not at all like the Bush-era tax cuts that shot our deficits through the roof and create a lingering hangover for our nation, crammed through the Senate by reconciliation in Bush's first term based upon a series of patently false promises. Who was heading up the team tasked with spinning that sow's ear into a silk purse? Oh, yeah....

For goodness sake, "the Chicago way"? Can't Gerson try to be even a little bit creative, to try to disguise his silly and childish attacks as something other than warmed over Republican demagoguery? Is he unable to conjure up a novel turn of phrase without the help of David Frum? To find fresh poison to inject into the public discourse without the help of Marc Thiessen? (Lord, what a dream team that was.)

Gerson continues to whine that Obama failed to broker a "grand budget compromise in 2011", a failure attributed to his demand that a significant part of the balancing of the budget come in the form of tax increases, then goes on to whine about forthcoming "large issues" - "avoiding the fiscal cliff, reforming the tax code, making entitlement commitments more sustainable". Never mind that the "fiscal cliff" is of little concern to anybody but pundits and demagogues - here in the real world we know that Congress will act to prevent that "cliff" from having any meaningful impact on the economy or defense spending. Never mind that Obama's "grand bargain" proposals included significant entitlement reform, and that the very legislation Gerson rails about, "Obamacare", implements cost-saving reforms - and that it has been Gerson's own Republican Party that has demagogued against the Medicare cuts that are part of that legislation. Never mind that "reforming the tax code" is a meaningless phrase - you may as well whimper that the President hasn't spent enough time reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Gerson closes by suggesting that if Obama doesn't "become an entirely different type of leader", by which he apparently means a spineless Republican, we should conclude that "America needs a new one". I guess it's fortunate for Gerson that a man who shares his complete lack of integrity, and endorses Gerson's apparent notion that "presidential leadership" is best demonstrated by following the latest opinion poll, is presently the Republican presidential nominee.

Justice Roberts, Apostate!

David Frum knows a little bit about apostasy. His abrupt termination by the AEI¹ was reportedly triggered by his "Waterloo" argument, that by choosing to fight healthcare reform rather than participate in the process the Republican Party missed the opportunity to potentially help craft a more conservative bill.

Since his termination, Frum has been attempting to reinvent himself as a different sort of Republican, a sensible Republican who longs for the good old days of bipartisanship (i.e., 5 Democrats joining a Republican bill) and who complains about partisanship, the unseemliness of right-wing radio hosts, and the like. His quest to reinvent himself has not found him a new home in the Republican Party, nor has his retreat from his own past excesses been forgotten by those who might be his allies but for his past attacks. But if Jeb Bush's apparent gamble on the Republican Party's return to moderation is credible, perhaps he'll seem like less of a Cassandra and more of an opinion leader.

Back in his AEI glory days, Frum appeared to be participating in what I jokingly suggested might be a contest between himself and two of his former Bush Administration speechwriting buddies, his ex-boss Michael Gerson and his fellow backbiter Marc Thiessen. The contest appeared to be, who could make the dumbest possible statement about an issue of public controversy and still be taken seriously. The AEI termination led to Frum's gradual, overall withdrawal from the contest - a choice he may regret, given that the apparent prize for the winner(s) is a sinecure on the Washington Post Op/Ed page.

I alluded to Gerson's commentary on the Supreme Court's decision upholding the ACA while poking fun at the ridiculous Peggy Noonan, but that wasn't entirely fair to Frum. Although he does see the Court's decision as contradicting the Republican Agenda, his criticism was directed not at Roberts but at the Republican Party. Once it was Waterloo, now it's a 100 Years War.

On the whole, Marc Thiessen is the clear contest winner - the guy whose arguments are usually devoid of fact or reason, with no apparent consequence to his standing as a conservative commentator. Michael Gerson's columns have gradually faded into mediocrity. It's if he can barely muster the energy to gather the kindling, leaving poor Marc not only to collect the firewood, but also to identify the heretics who must be burned.

When I saw Thiessen's piece today, titled Why is Fred Hiatt So Awful at Picking Op/Ed Columnists Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices, it seemed lucky for Frum that he had thrown in the towel. Thiessen lectures us that,

Democrats have been virtually flawless in appointing reliable liberals to the court. Yet Republicans, more often than not, appoint justices who vote with the other side on critical decisions.

If you actually follow the court, you will recall Justice Stevens' observations that his "transformation" from "conservative" to "liberal" did not actually involve his changing any of his opinions - it resulted from the court's dramatic shift to the right. Reagan's policies and politics would be far too liberal for the modern Republican Party. He appointed his nominees before the individual health insurance mandate was created and advocated by conservatives and the Republican Party, so it shouldn't be particularly surprising that his nominees represented a different brand of conservatism.

Thiessen also forgets that the task of nominating candidates for the Supreme Court belongs to the President, not to the party. Prior to G.W.'s presidency it was difficult to imagine that the Republicans would turn on a president's nominee in the manner in which they turned on Harriet Miers. Thiessen complains that Supreme Court justices don't share his preferred political agenda, and aren't consistently trying to advance his preferred agenda through their service on the Court? Maybe that's because Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush didn't share Thiessen's agenda, and thus didn't apply his litmus tests when selecting candidates. Perhaps also, Supreme Court Justices don't see their job quite the same way Thiessen does.

And that's before we get to the silliness of Thiessen's suggestion that the justices appointed by Democratic Presidents always vote against Thiessen's agenda "on critical decisions". As they say, it all depends on whose ox is getting gored.

Thiessen prattles on with the notion that "Conservatives are pariahs if they vote against the left on certain issues. But if they cross over vote with the left, they are hailed as statesmen." Hardly. Kennedy, generally regarded as the "swing vote" of the current court, is not hailed as a statesman. He's often characterized as having a weak and inconsistent approach to the Constitution, and of tending to patronize women. Who does he imagine he's talking about? Rehnquist? Scalia? Thomas? Alito? Because one example from one case, with cherry-picked quotes from a handful of sources, does not constitute a pattern - even if we ignore the fact that "pre-emptive" attacks are irrelevant to his argument and that it's conservatives like himself who are engaged in the behavior he supposedly deplores.

Thiessen's on a roll,

Liberal nominees can simply affirm liberal positions, while conservatives must speak cryptically in terms of their judicial philosophy.

A statement that leaves me with the firm impression that Thiessen has never read a Supreme Court opinion - majority, concurring or dissent - by any of the Justices he's attacking. If you read a typical Scalia or Thomas opinion and are left scratching your head, "Is he a conservative? It's so... cryptic", all you've established is that you're a dolt.

Thiessen whines,

But legislate from the bench is exactly what Roberts did last week. The law’s proponents consistently rejected the notion that the individual mandate was a tax. But Roberts effectively redrafted the statute, making the mandate a tax in order to declare it constitutional....

That is the kind of sophistry we expect from liberals. The left sees the law as a tool of social justice — so they start with the desired outcome and then come up with legal reasoning to justify it. That is what Roberts did last week. He decided he wanted to uphold Obamacare and rewrote the statute to fit that outcome.

Talk about turning history on its head. Two years ago when the bill passed, conservative commentators regarded it as all-but-certain to pass muster with the Supreme Court. Then, months later, a right-wing law professor invented the "activity/inactivity" distinction that became the centerpiece of the legal attack on the ACA. And it almost worked. As Thiessen knows, Roberts endorsed that newly fabricated "magic bullet" argument - the one that was supposed to take down the ACA (or at least its key elements.

Had the four dissenters joined Roberts in overturning only the mandate and the associated community rating / preexisting condition provisions of the ACA, I think Roberts would have joined with them and that hacks like Thiessen would be praising his brilliance. But Roberts had just one vote to cast. With four Justices voting to uphold the bulk of the ACA, four hungering to overturn the entire Act - including provisions that are already in effect and have absolutely no relation to the mandate - Roberts chose the more judicially conservative approach. Thiessen should perhaps address his anger at the dissenters who, as a result of their eagerness to throw the baby out with the bathwater, ended up preserving both.

No, there's no real intellectual satisfaction to "We'll call it a tax and, voila, constitutional," but that was the avenue that allowed Roberts to join with the dissenters on issues that a better legal analysis would have required him to reject. The better approach would have been either to apply a traditional Commerce Clause analysis, applying existing precedent and discussing the proposed "activity/inactivity" distinction within that framework. Although there's some debate over whether it constitutes dicta or holding, Roberts attempted to articulate a new framework - but in order to avoid a form of activism that would take center stage in Constitutional Law textbooks for decades to come, he found an alternative path to upholding the ACA.

Thiessen sees only two reasons why Roberts would have changed his vote, "[that] he was suddenly convinced by his liberal colleagues, or simply had a failure of nerve". Thiessen apparently cannot contemplate the possibility that given a forced choice between (virtually) all or nothing, Roberts chose the conservative approach - eschewing the activism that hacks like Thiessen claim to detest but, as evidenced by his poisonous diatribe, actually desire. Thiessen falls victim to self-parody,

We need jurists who not only have a philosophy of judicial restraint, but the intestinal fortitude not to be swayed by pressure from the New York Times, the Georgetown cocktail circuit and the legal academy.

Which columnists do you suppose you're more likely to find at a Georgetown cocktail party - those of the New York Times, or those of the Washington Post? Which paper does Thiessen, who is explicitly trying to punish, diminish and marginalize Roberts for voting "the wrong way" on a case, work for, again? What's the point of Thiessen's vitriol, or of his long history of seeking out heretics and calling for their destruction, if not to influence them and others - to try to intimidate them into toeing the party line? And the legal academy? Which justices adhered to precedent and two centuries of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, again? And which glommed onto a less than two-year-old theory concocted by a law professor, then championed by others, as a means of defeating the ACA? Thiessen is entitled to his own opinion column, but not to his own facts.

I was going to declare Thiessen the hands-down winner, but before I had a chance to write anything Gerson came up with a late entry. Another "facts be damned" whine about how conservatives justicescare too much about the institution of the Court to simply aren't able to ram through the Republican agenda.

Perhaps channeling his inner David Brooks, king of the false dichotomy, Gerson pontificates that there are "two varieties of judicial conservatism — institutionalism and constitutionalism".

In [an institutionalist's] view, the court maintains its power by exercising it sparingly — deferring whenever possible to the legislative branch. Institutionalism embodies a temperamental conservatism — a commitment to continuity, humility and prudence.

[Constitutionalists focus] on the rigorous application of the words of the founding document. In this view, the meaning of the text is primary, whatever the political consequences of applying it.

So within the context of this decision, in which five Justices - the dissenters and Roberts - looked at the following Constitutional language:

[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;

And concluded that the text includes an absolute prohibition on the regulation of what the Court determines to be the regulation of inactivity - imposing a penalty on a person who chooses not to engage in a specific form of commerce - no matter what the facts or how compelling the circumstances. The fundamental "reasoning" for the prohibition is that, although states have long imposed mandates without controversy or excess, to allow even the most modest of mandate in even the most compelling of circumstances would inevitably lead to the government forcing people to buy broccoli. That argument is neither textual nor logical.

Meanwhile it is possible to be a close adherent of the text of the Constitution while also believing that the Court needs to protect its credibility as an institution. Gerson defends the judicial activism of the justices he purports to be constitutionalists, suggesting that they're pushing back against "liberal activism", but that's a self-serving, political argument. In the present case, the concurring opinion represents both the better textual interpretation and (as Gerson concedes) the "institutional conservatism" that Gerson would have us believe is somehow solely the province of Roberts. (Sorry, Michael - Roberts has only one vote - he needed to join with four others for that vote to count for anything.)

Gerson shares, and perhaps parrots, Thiessen's complaint that Roberts turned to Congress's power to tax as his basis for upholding the law. He then presents an addle, social science argument that the mandate might work as a "mandate" but by revealing to people the supposed secret that they could actually choose not to buy insurance and pay a penalty, Roberts has made it more likely that people will regard their choice in economic terms and now be more likely to pick the penalty if they think they'll save money. Seriously? One hardly dares tell Gerson that such "reasoning" has no place in the constitutional analysis of a statute.

Gerson opened his column by casting aspersions on Earl Warren, and closes by cautioning Justice Roberts, in effect, that if he doesn't shape up and start doing what the Republican Party wants him to do, he can expect hacks like Gerson to argue that he's the "new Earl Warren".

On the whole, Gerson seems to be parroting arguments raised by others, perhaps including Thiessen, so I think Thiessen takes the round.
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1. For somebody who cherishes intellectual rigor and honest debate, being fired by the AEI would be a badge of honor... but I presuppose that such a person could get hired by the AEI.

Ross Douthat's Weak Take on Charles Murray

Does the AEI Throw Really Good Parties? I ask because, except for the guy we know doesn't get invited¹ to their shin digs, "moderate conservative" commentators seem to be lining up to a man to say, "Charles Murray wrote a great book with the wrong solutions, and liberals are idiots." Recall David Brooks, grafting his high school sociology onto Murray's notion of a "class divide" between high and low income whites. Now we have Ross Douthat lavishing praise on Murray for producing "a brilliant work", even though he thinks all of Murray's proposed solutions are dead wrong.

In a sense I should be grateful for the Times, and its pundits' tenth grade quality book reports - they read the book so I don't have to. I just wish they were more... capable when it comes to analysis.² By way of contrast, within a few paragraphs Frum pretty much shatters the notion that there's anything brilliant about Murray's book,

Murray is baffled that a collapse in the pay and conditions of work should have led to a decline in a workforce's commitment to the labor market.

His book wants to lead readers to the conclusion that the white working class has suffered a moral collapse attributable to vaguely hinted at cultural forces. Yet he never specifies what those cultural forces might be, and he presents no evidence at all for a link between those forces and the moral collapse he sees....

This trend toward inequality varies from country to country—more extreme in the United Kingdom, less extreme in Germany. The subsequent destabilization of working-class social life likewise varies from country to country. But if the trend is global, the cause must be global too. Yet that thought does not trouble Murray.

Frum also notes that Murray cherry-picked a starting date in order to support his conclusions, whereas other starting dates destroy his argument. I argued in response to Brooks' piece that Brooks (and by implication Murray) ignored prior history. Frum points out that they also ignore subsequent history.

Let me instance another example of the unwillingness. In the first long quoted passage from Coming Apart, I asterisked one of Murray's statistical claims, a claim stating that wages have stagnated for the bottom 50% of the white work force. That claim is true if you draw your line, as Murray does, beginning in 1960. But put your thumb on the left side of the chart, and start drawing the line beginning in 1970. Then you notice that median wages have stagnated for the whole bottom 75%—and that the median wage only begins to show significant improvement over time when you look at the top 5%.

That number points in a very different direction from the one in which Murray would like to lead his audience. And this kind of polemical use of data is one—but only one—of the things that discredits Coming Apart as an explanation of the social trouble of our times.

Douthat offers a knee-jerk reaction to Murray's proposal to reinvent the existing social safety net in the form of a "universal guaranteed income":

Murray argues that our leaders should embrace his own libertarian convictions, scrap all existing government programs (and the dependency and perverse incentives they create) and replace them with a universal guaranteed income. This is a fascinating idea; it’s also fantastically impractical, and entirely divorced from American political realities. Which means that it’s divorced from any possibility of actually addressing the crisis that Murray so vividly describes.

Particularly when you're talking about pushing massive reform bills through Congress, it's always difficult to change an entrenched status quo. But is that the end of Douthat's analysis? "It would never pass, so it will never work"? It's fair to suggest that Murray should have offered a few realistic proposals along with a Gingrichian, "We'll change everything to be the way I want and then everything will work!" But Douthat seems to be saying, "Change is hard, so unless you show me an easy path to implementing solutions I would just as soon do nothing."

Par for the course, Douthat goes right into a hollow man argument about liberals, fabricating an argument that few to none actually hold, but which he pretends is representative and, of course, is easy to bat down.

Murray’s critics accuse him of essentially blaming the victim: the social breakdown he described may be real enough, they allow, but it’s an inevitable consequence of an economic system that Republicans have rigged to benefit the rich. In the liberal view, there’s nothing wrong with America’s working class that can’t be solved by taxing the wealthy and using the revenue to weave a stronger safety net.³

That invites the usual challenge: Okay, Ross, name one liberal outside of the irrelevant fringe who actually takes that position. You can't? Then why are you pretending it's representative of liberal views.⁴ A dose of reality from the unapologetic liberal, Paul Krugman, a guy whose column can't be particularly difficult for Douthat to locate,

So we have become a society in which less-educated men have great difficulty finding jobs with decent wages and good benefits. Yet somehow we’re supposed to be surprised that such men have become less likely to participate in the work force or get married, and conclude that there must have been some mysterious moral collapse caused by snooty liberals. And Mr. Murray also tells us that working-class marriages, when they do happen, have become less happy; strange to say, money problems will do that.

His position, of course, bears no resemblance to Douthat's fictional liberal. The problem Krugman identifies isn't that we're not taxing the rich - it's that the pool of jobs available at the blue collar end of the job market is drying up and the jobs that remain offer lower wages and fewer benefits. Economic stress.

Douthat's proposed solutions to the plight of lower wage workers are, well, insipid. After telling us that we cannot afford to sustain our present entitlements, even if taxes are increased on the rich, Douthat argues,

The current tax-and-transfer system imposes a tax on work — the payroll tax — that falls heavily on low-wage labor, and poor Americans face steep marginal tax rates because of how their benefits phase out as their wages increase. Both burdens can and should be lightened. There are ways to finance Social Security besides a regressive tax on work, and ways to structure benefits and tax credits that don’t reduce the incentives to take a better-paying job.

Okay, Ross, please describe exactly how we are going to fund Social Security if we reduce FICA taxes, and how will your plan do anything but add to the hysterical debate, driven by your political party, that Social Security is running out of money and must be slashed or abolished? And which benefits and tax credits do you imagine are keeping people out of higher wage jobs?

Is Douthat a child of privilege? It seems pretty clear that he has never worked a low-wage job - the type of job where a raise of twenty-five or thirty cents per hour is a big deal. Who does Douthat imagine is turning down pay raises because of the unidentified "benefits and tax credits" he imagines are a deterrent to seeking higher wages? I will grant that there's an uncomfortable period when you're earning well into the six figures, when you lose a great many tax credits and benefits available to lower wage earners, are hit by the alternative minimum tax, and pay an effective tax rate higher than people who earn vastly more than you do. But that's a problem for the top 10%, not the bottom 30%, and people who have worked their way to the top 10% don't appear to be giving up on work.

Douthat also argues that the best way to increase wages for the working poor is... to take more parents out of the workplace. Because nothing raises the living standard of a two-income family like having one parent lose a job.

Second, if we want lower-income Americans to have stable family lives, our political system should take family policy seriously, and look for ways to make it easier for parents to manage work-life balance when their kids are young. There are left-wing approaches to this issue (European-style family-leave requirements) and right-wing approaches (a larger child tax credit). Neither is currently on the national agenda; both should be.

Did you get that? Right after telling us how horrible it is that we "structure benefits and tax credits" in a manner that reduces "the incentives to take a better-paying job", Douthat argues in favor of benefits (extended paid maternity and paternity leave) and tax credits ("a larger child tax credit") that are intended to temporarily or permanently remove one parent from the workforce. Did you also catch that this proposal crashes head-on into Douthat's criticism of Murray - the type of subsidy that would improve or even sustain the living standards of working class families while one or both parents took extended parental leave or one became stay-at-home are "entirely divorced from American political realities".

I know Douthat doesn't like to hear this, but another way that people at the bottom of the labor pool can position themselves to advance is by deferring parenthood while they get established, and having smaller families. Douthat appears to be the sort of man who is deeply disturbed⁴ by the idea that women might have active sex lives without becoming pregnant.

I'll agree that our nation has implemented a maze of policies, primarily relating to eligibility for public assistance or and taxes, that create a disincentive to marry. It's fair to argue that we should revisit some of those policies, even if it means that some marginal households receive additional benefits due to the continuation of benefits based upon individual earnings instead of reducing or eliminating benefits based on family earnings following marriage, but the balance isn't easy to find and even if you found it you would likely have Douthat arguing that the best solutions are "fantastically impractical, and entirely divorced from American political realities".

Douthat next argues that the nation "shouldn't be welcoming millions of immigrants who compete with" low-wage workers. He pretends that while society as a whole gets some benefits from immigration, "it can lower wages and disrupt communities" and that we're effectively "ask[ing] an already-burdened working class to bear these costs alone." By this point I am not sure that Douthat understands anything about immigration, taxation or payment for public services. Douthat then endorses the strategy of "the leading Republican candidates" to "welcome more high-skilled immigrants" (I guess they don't compete for jobs?) and "mak[e] it as hard as possible for employers to hire low-skilled workers off the books" - something his party talks about from time to time, but generally obstructs.

Note also how Douthat sidesteps the issue of illegal immigration, as if there's a huge pool of legal immigrants fighting for minimum wage jobs as opposed to a huge pool of undocumented workers who are often willing to work for less than minimum wage. If we are talking about illegal immigration, Douthat needs to address the reality that people in his economic class or above (e.g., Mitt Romney or Walmart) utilize illegal immigrant labor on a routine basis, because it's cheap, they don't want to maintain their pools, lawns and tennis courts themselves - and it's not a problem as long as they maintain plausible deniability. When states have been effective in, say, keeping farmers from utilizing undocumented workers to harvest crops, we've had problems with crops rotting in the fields. I'm not sure what population of legal immigrants Douthat imagines are preventing citizens from getting near-minimum wage jobs.

Douthat's final argument is,

Finally, if we want low-income men to be marriageable, employable and law-abiding, we should work to reduce incarceration rates. Prison is a school for crime and an anchor on advancement....

Except the principal barriers to employment for an ex-offender are a lack of job skills and a criminal record. Reducing the number of people we incarcerate could offer other social benefits, but it's not going to transform a population of marginal workers into highly desirable, employable workers. In case Douthat didn't notice, crime rates tend to go up in communities that have higher unemployment rates and fewer government services. It's great to talk about "larger police forces", but given the budget crises that are particularly acute in high crime communities and how Douthat's own party demagogues on the subject of government employment, that doesn't seem particularly realistic. And recall, at least when other people's ideas are on the table, Douthat is quick to declare that if it's not politically easy "it's divorced from any possibility of actually addressing the crisis".

The idea of prison being a "school for crime" is interesting, given that over the years I've represented a number of people who have been in prison. It wasn't my observation that they were becoming better criminals due to their periods of incarceration. It was more that the smarter criminals don't get caught (at least not as often), insulate themselves from the most visible aspects of their criminal enterprises (e.g., supplying cocaine to the street dealers as opposed to doing the actual dealing), or find "legal" ways to steal money. (Conrad Black, for example, continues to fume over his incarceration for what he and his lawyers contend was a perfectly legal looting of his corporation.)

If Douthat wants to get on board with the tiny but growing population of prominent conservatives who are finally taking note of the extreme cost and limited benefit of our 'prison nation', and join with the left to fashion, implement and fund community-based policing and penalties that should, over time, help maintain and even reduce our presently low crime rates and allow states to realize cost savings through the closing of prisons, great. But I won't hold my breath waiting for him to get started.

Fundamentally, Douthat makes the same mistake as Murray and Brooks, believing that the solution to wage stagnation and a loss of job opportunities is "to make it easier for working-class Americans⁶ to cultivate the virtues that foster resilience and self-sufficiency." Working class white Americans, that is. Krugman notes,

Back in 1996, the same year Ms. Himmelfarb was lamenting our moral collapse, [sociologist William Julius] Wilson published 'When Work Disappears: The New World of the Urban Poor,' in which he argued that much of the social disruption among African-Americans popularly attributed to collapsing values was actually caused by a lack of blue-collar jobs in urban areas. If he was right, you would expect something similar to happen if another social group — say, working-class whites — experienced a comparable loss of economic opportunity. And so it has.

I guess it's easier for people like Murray, Brooks and Douthat to ignore history and to imagine that society's troubles come from a sudden transformation of human nature from what we saw in the decades and centuries preceding 1963, but no. Human nature hasn't changed. The opportunities and incentives available to low-wage earners have changed.

And speaking of incentives, I suspect that it's more than just AEI parties. If as a conservative pundit you don't pimp the right books, candidates and ideas - even when they're bad - you don't get the book contracts, speaking fees, invitations, and celebrity treatment that gilds your life. If you don't believe me, ask David Frum.
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1. Via mythago.

2. Or is it a question of honesty?

3. Douthat also argues, "It was globalization, not Republicans, that killed the private-sector union and reduced the returns to blue-collar work." It's fair to say that globalization was not exclusively a Republican idea or priority, but Douthat appears to believe that it happened in a vacuum, and appears to be ignorant of how nations like Germany took a different approach to globalization with a much different effect on its manufacturing base and wages.

4. Stupid or lying? Fool or fraud?

5. Per that article,

[Douthat] first gained attention for Privilege, a bittersweet 2005 memoir of his years at Harvard, where the drinking, partying, and hooking up left him feeling alienated. Of one alcohol-fueled fling, he wrote: "Whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered—'You know, I'm on the pill.'...On that night, in that dank basement bedroom, she spoke for all of us, the whole young American elite. Not I love you, not This is incredible, not Let's go all the way, but I'm on the pill."

It's more than reasonable to infer that Douthat didn't want to make a baby - but it completely ruined the mood when he found out that the girl expressing interest in him had taken precautions.

6. Douthat appears to be following Murray's thesis here, such that he actually means "white Americans." If he doesn't see this as a racial issue, he should distance himself from that aspect of Murray's thesis.

Continuation of Policy vs. Endorsement

I guess if we're grading on a curve, among his political peer group Frum is "usually pretty honest in his reasoning", but I have a difficult time ignoring his past sophistry, a professed devotion to rationality that arose largely after he found himself somewhat exiled from the Republican inner circle, and his continuing tendency to stray from the facts on hot button issues.

I recently saw Frum echo the line I've heard from various right-wing sources that President Obama has followed the Bush Administration's approach to the "War on Terror", even expanding some aspects of it, and how that stands as both vindication of the Bush Administration and as evidence of the hypocrisy of everybody who criticized Bush's stances on human rights and torture. I have a difficult time accepting that Frum is offering that line as "honest reasoning".

First, it's a simplistic comparison. It's not inherently unfair to take a big picture perspective, nor is it incorrect to argue that in a big picture sense the Obama Administration has largely followed the model defined by the Bush Administration as of, say, Bush's sixth year in office. The Obama Administration has been more forceful in its rejection of torture, but the Bush Administration backed away from its early tactics even as it continued its public defense of those tactics. But the Obama Administration has changed its approach to terrorism to much less of the a state-focused model of the Bush Administration, and its claim that invading nations that posed us no threat would somehow create a peaceful and prosperous Middle East, and much more of an international effort focused on finding and stopping terrorists wherever they are.

Frum ties his hands to some extent, by endorsing terrorist attacks in the name of slowing down the weapons programs of hostile states, specifically the assassination of Iranian scientists - something that nobody seems to argue will have a material impact on its weapons programs, but no doubt does create a lot of fear among the Iranian scientific community. Whatever the U.S. knowledge of, or role in, those assassinations, the Obama Administration has stepped up the use of drones and "targeted killings" in its effort to squelch al-Qaeda. Frum argues that it's legitimate to commit acts of terrorism against Iran, because Iran commits acts of terrorism against other states, never mind the obvious circularity. That's just another display of the outrage directed by those who applauded Reagan's characterization of the USSR as an "evil empire" when hostile states make an equivalent over-the-top condemnation of our nation or an ally. It's always different when "we do it" - and as we're acting as a force of good, we are excused from all constraints of law or morality. Never mind that the hostile nation employs pretty much the same set of rationalizations.

Were Frum able to admit to others, or perhaps to himself, that terrorism is terrorism - that despite the rhetoric of the speeches he helped pen, you cannot eradicate terrorism if you're going to engage in terrorism as a tactic against your enemies - he might sound like Glenn Greenwald, who condems the Obama Administration for escalating aspects of its war effort while ignoring both its campaign promises and issues of law and justice. But even if Frum perceives that escalation, he has bound himself to a narrative in which this isn't something new, it's more of the same. But I don't see how somebody as bright as Frum, and somebody as intimately familiar with the tactics of the Bush Administration during its first few years in office, is unable to find meaningful distinction between the Bush Administration's approach and that of the Obama Administration. Many of the same people who were squarely behind the invasion of Iraq now favor the invasion of Iran. It would be more than fair for Frum to acknowledge that President Obama is disinclined to start new land wars, let alone a project as vast as an invasion and occupation as Iran. But part of me suspects that Frum is among those who would favor the invasion, so perhaps there's self-interest in his failure to draw that distinction.

Second, the continuation of policy from one administration to another is not a surprise - it's to be expected. Many presidents have inherited wars started by a predecessor. Not a one has summarily ended the war on his first day in office, and many have continued or escalated wars that they, personally, would likely not have started. The U.S. government is like an ocean liner. You can't simply spin the wheel and head in a different direction. Turning the ship is a long, slow process. President Obama promised to wind down Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it was inevitable that doing so would be a years-long process.

As many have pointed out over many decades, even when an incoming administration is critical of the policies of a predecessor, even when it characterizes the policies as "undemocratic" or as a "power grab", it's rare for an incoming President to actually roll back the change once in office. Even if they are less likely to employ the power, or choose not to do so, Presidents enjoy having the potential of exercising the new powers claimed by a predecessor. In the context of "national defense" this phenomenon is further complicated by the fact that as the face of the government, the President is apt to be held personally responsible for a security issue that his opponents claim resulted from his retreat from a prior President's position, even if the new position is more consistent with our nation's heritage and professed values. Consider, for example, right-wing demagoguery in response to the reading of Miranda rights to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the "Underwear Bomber". If we uphold our nation's basic values, at least from the professed standpoint of those demagogues, the nation is doomed.

Here's the deal: Even if there are material changes in the details, Frum's argument boils down to any "big picture" continuation of policy stands as proof that the former administration's policies "worked". Often that will be the case, but in many cases we're dealing with the aforementioned problem of momentum - once the country starts heading in a particular direction you can't turn on a dime. Frum knows this - his own demagoguery on health reform reflects his understanding that, whatever flaws the program might have, once you implement a national healthcare program it's virtually impossible to eliminate that program. Frum could also look to programs like Social Security and Medicare - would he argue that their continuation reflects the Republican Party's acceptance of those programs as sound policy? That G.W.'s massive, unfunded expansion of Medicare through a prescription drug benefit shows a wholehearted Republican embrace of Medicare? Of course not.

Which is to say, when it comes to addressing some of the most important issues of our time, Frum's not being honest.

Update: More of Frum's "honesty" in action.

No, That's Not What Republicans Want

David Brooks describes what Republicans supposedly want in a Presidential candidate:

The central problem is that Mitt Romney doesn’t fit the mold of what many Republicans want in a presidential candidate. They don’t want a technocratic manager. They want a bold, blunt radical outsider who will take on the establishment, speak truth to power and offend the liberal news media.

David Brooks is a Republican, so it's telling that he is saying "they" instead of "we". Brooks is not describing what he or his peers want - his thesis, after all, is that the Republican masses need to get past their visceral need for "Braveheart" and accept Mitt "Organization Man" Romney. (Yes, he really said that Republican voters want their leader to be like "Braveheart".)

The first thing that comes to my mind, though, is that I can't think of a single Republican nominee who has come close to fitting Brooks' description. Certainly not Gerald Ford. Ronald Reagan was literally a spokesperson for corporate America. Bush I and II were the antitheses of "outsiders". If you were to identify a Republican who comes close to fitting the bill you could argue Richard Nixon, although by today's measures of Republicanism he was something akin to a socialist. While Ronald Reagan presented the affable cowboy persona and G.W. played the part of a Texas rancher, as part of their respective efforts to present a public image that might fool people into thinking them something other than insiders, they were both selected and advanced by the party because of the expectation that they would advance the interests of the nation's political and corporate elite - and they did so, in spades.

If you were to challenge Brooks to explain why Republicans keep nominating Robert the Bruce instead of Braveheart, why their typical nominee is a "that ain't me" from Fortunate Son, you're probably going to hear it explained that (as with Brooks' push for Romney) Republicans would prefer Braveheart but to the extent that there's an actual contest for the nomination they'll settle for electability. Barry Goldwater, millionaire's son; George H.W. Bush, Senator's son; George W. Bush, Senator's grandson and President's son; John McCain, admiral's son. Bob Dole was in Congress for more than thirty years before he led the ticket - humble beginnings can't transform a guy who has spent a quarter of a century in the Senate into an outsider. Gerald Ford, despite almost a quarter century in the House, was the closest of the post-Nixon bunch to an outsider, for all the good it did him. Bold? If Brooks means "brash," perhaps he's thinking of G.W. as "the exception who proves the rule," but which of the Republican presidents or nominees had a track record in office (whether in Congress or the Senate) that can truly be called "bold" or "radical"? Blunt? If Brooks means "dull"....

Somehow, despite supposedly wanting a bold, blunt outsider, the Republicans keep nominating and electing establishment Republican insiders. Instead of electing people who will "speak truth to power", they elect corporate spokespersons. Instead of electing candidates who "offend the liberal news media", whatever that is, they elect candidates who get kid gloves treatment from the mainstream media. If you didn't live through his presidency, you might be confused (as Brooks apparently is) and believe that Ronald Reagan was vilified in the media, while in fact he was the "Teflon President". When an obviously unprepared G.W. Bush ran for the Presidency, the mainstream media told us that we shouldn't care because he would nominate and delegate to competent people and he was the guy we would most want to share a beer with. Such harsh treatment....

As usual, Brooks condescends to Republican voters. He knows better than the masses in his party what is good for them and what is good for the nation. They're grunting savages who want Braveheart, and they now need erudite nerds like Brooks to tell them what is best for them. Do I exaggerate?

The only real shift between school and adult politics is that the jocks realize they need conservative intellectuals, who are geeks who have decided their fellow intellectuals should never be allowed to run anything and have learned to speak slowly so the jocks will understand them.

I think it's a fair characterization to say that, in that sentence, Brooks is describing his perception of himself in relation to the typical Republican voter.

Brooks might respond that he's correct about what Republicans want, even if they keep voting for consummate insiders who might, in the vein of an ad for a pain reliever, declare, "I'm not a bold, honest outsider, but I play one on television". But if that's the case he's still not really telling us anything. You may as well make a claim like, "Liberals want the President to be a philosopher king, but keep voting for people who actually exist." What voters of all stripes really want is for their elected representatives to share their values. What insiders like Brooks have done is to both recognize and create a set of litmus tests and cognitive shortcuts, and to instruct voters, "These are the measures by which you know that the candidate is 'one of you'". Voters say they want strong leaders? Outsiders? People who will "speak truth to power" (now a Republican slogan?), and the like? Then, by Jove, that must be what they're voting for in their party nominee until, at the end of the campaign, they compromise on somebody who they think can win the election. I guess we're not supposed to ask why the nominee that best fits the bill of "what voters want" is so often rejected in favor of one who is "electable". Political self-flagellation?

Meanwhile, Brooks' "lunch room poly sci" lunch buddy, David Frum, is dancing on the grave of a politician that David Brooks would have us believe comes as close to the Republican ideal as is humanly possible. To Brooks, that would seem to translate into, "We can't vote for the candidate we all want because nobody will vote for her."

Leadership vs. Leadership Styles

When I saw a Republican "analyst" on Real Time announce that President Obama is "not a leader", I couldn't help but roll my eyes. It seems like only yesterday that Republican "analysts" were lamenting that President Obama has pushed all sorts of reforms on the nation too quickly, and had transformed our nation into some form of Kenyan socialist dystopia. With the release of a new party memo, that all gets flushed down the memory hole.

Obama's style of leadership is a fair subject for comment and criticism. I think it is fair to say the following:

1. President Obama likes compromise solutions, and likes to achieve his compromise deals behind-the-scenes. That may not be an unreasonable approach to take in these hyperpartisan times, when even the most modest suggestion (e.g., eliminating a generous tax break for luxury corporate jets) results in a Republican "leader" and negotiator throwing a tantrum and storming away from the negotiating table. But it's a form of leadership that is largely invisible to the public and, when visible, is a bit unseemly - as if there's no firm line, and that there's nothing that cannot be negotiated away for the sake of the deal.

2. President Obama does not take strong stands in favor of policies that he does not believe will be passed by Congress. This is not unreasonable, given that the Democrats in Congress have repeatedly gone out of their way to hamstring the President's agenda or to extort ridiculous concessions to support him. Also, taking a strong public stance in favor of an agenda that you cannot pass can make you look weak and cripple your ability to advance other items on your agenda. What did Bush accomplish after leading his party to failure on Social Security privatization?

3. President Obama rarely uses his access to the media to attempt to shape the public debate, and when he does take a public stand it is usually very late in the game when he's simply trying to round up the last few votes. I understand the argument that the belief that even the President can reshape public opinion is an embrace of mythology, and I also understand how the modern media will often take a clear statement and use it (or allow partisan 'guests' to use it) to cloud the debate while "objectively" failing to state the facts, but I do think that the President could do a much better job explaining both his agenda and the necessity of some of the compromises he makes.

Despite the fumbles and compromises, I am having a difficult time thinking of a President who, in my lifetime, accomplished more in his first year than Obama. If we are to think of G.W. as a "leader", let's recall that he spent his first 100 days arguing that it was unfair to expect a President to accomplish anything in his first 100 days, and was doing little more than running his approval rating into the ground before he scored his "trifecta". How much credit should I give him for ramming through tax cuts for the rich via reconciliation? If you can't get sixty U.S. Senators to vote for tax cuts for the rich, you're probably doing something wrong.

As is his wont, David Brooks is advancing the Republican line in more measured tones. He initially suggests that it is a mistake for a President to "live up to th[e] grandiose image" defined by John F. Kennedy in an "Inaugural Address that did enormous damage to the country". Brooks lectures, that Kennedy's "speech gave a generation an unrealistic, immature vision of the power of the presidency." He then pays Obama a back-handed compliment, that he has "renounced that approach" and "Far from being a heroic quasi Napoleon who runs the country from the Oval Office, Obama has been a delegator and a convener". Putting in the hat of the rank amateur armchair psychoanalyst, Brooks potificates,

All his life, Obama has worked in nonhierarchical institutions — community groups, universities, legislatures — so maybe it is natural that he has a nonhierarchical style. He tends to see issues from several vantage points at once, so maybe it is natural that he favors a process that involves negotiating and fudging between different points of view.

Still, I would never have predicted he would be this sort of leader. I thought he would get into trouble via excessive self-confidence. Obama’s actual governing style emphasizes delegation and occasional passivity. Being led by Barack Obama is like being trumpeted into battle by Miles Davis. He makes you want to sit down and discern.

You might think that, in light of his comments about Kennedy and his scorn for Presidents who tend toward grandiosity, Brooks would see that as a good thing. But when it comes to this type of column, Brooks has never been one to strive for internal consistency. Brooks expresses,

But this is who Obama is, and he’s not going to change, no matter how many liberals plead for him to start acting like Howard Dean.

When the Democrats had the opportunity to pick a leader who acted like Howard Dean, and by that I mean the opportunity to nominate Howard Dean, they picked Al Gore. I'm not sure what Brooks would take as a repudiation of his notion that the Democratic Party is yearning for somebody who acts like Howard Dean, but you might think that would be sufficient.

Brooks echoes some familiar complaints about the President:

He has not educated the country about the debt challenge. He has not laid out a plan, aside from one vague, hyperpoliticized speech. He has ceded the initiative to the Republicans, who have dominated the debate by establishing facts on the ground.

Here I have some sympathy for those who argue that the President has little ability to shape the debate. Any number of prominent Republicans have made statements about the national debt and deficit that range from misleading to outright false. They have muddied up the debate on the debt ceiling, something that is already confusing to many Americans, such that almost two thirds of Americans believe that raising the debt ceiling involves new spending. And the media, including David Brooks, has been content to let that happen. What happens when the President attempts to push back? David Brooks takes time out from whining that the President has not been pushing back to whine that the President is "hyperpartisan". There are hyperpartisans in the picture and they, like Brooks, are intent upon finding fault with everything the President does, even when it's exactly what they've asked. Take it from Brooks:

If [Obama] can overcome his aloofness and work intimately with Republicans, he may be able to avert a catastrophe and establish a model for a more realistic, collegial presidency.

Which, as we've already discussed, involves working things out in back room deals, or perhaps on the golf course with John Boehner, which is what the President is already doing.

In pretty much the same category as Brooks, we have David Frum - the man who was crying bitter tears that Republican obstructionism over healthcare reform was the party's Waterloo, until Joe Lieberman saved the day for the Republicans by insisting that Medicare expansion be removed from the final bill. Back then, he was among those crying that the President was changing too much too quickly. Now? He wants to erase that history, and reinvent Obama as a wimp:

Yet Brooks has laid out the most useful and effective critique of Barack Obama for Republicans in 2012: The job has overwhelmed the man. He’s not an alien, he’s not a radical. He’s just not the person the country needs. He’s not tough enough, he’s not imaginative enough, and he’s not determined enough.

Frum argues with some validity that the President has not put enough weight behind some of his nominations, but his criticism reflects either a lack of knowledge of U.S. history and Senate rules, or a deliberate effort to mislead his readers into believing that the only thing that has changed since FDR threatened to stack the Supreme Court is the name of the man in the White House. Frum states, again with some validity,

With unemployment at 10% and interest rates at 1%, the president got persuaded that it was debt and interest that trumped growth and jobs as Public Issue #1.

I think the picture is more complicated than Frum suggests, in that although Obama clearly underestimated what it would take to bring about a strong economic recovery, assuming the federal government had the capacity to do so, he pushed through about as strong a stimulus bill as he could muster and assumed that we would have a V-shaped recovery. Yes, between the Blue Dog faction of his own party, Republican demagoguery, and a complacent media, we are dealing with a government that's intent on cutting spending when we arguably would fare much better with another enormous stimulus bill. But I'll note that, even in criticizing the President for not getting behind such a bill, Frum conspicuously avoids admitting that to be the policy he's endorsing. Well, sort-of endorsing, because I'm pretty sure that if the President were to do as Frum suggests, Frum would instead be criticizing the President for falling back on a failed idea.

Frum's historic revisionism continues,

Back in 2008, Obama made two big promises: a tax cut for everybody earning less than $250,000 and an Afghan surge. I think it’s safe to say that Obama believed in neither of them. I’d argue that neither was important to electing him. Both were adopted for defensive reasons, to shield himself from conservative critique. In the very different circumstances of 2009, both promises rapidly showed themselves to be counter-productive. The “tax cut” promise caused Obama to direct almost one-third of his big stimulus into an individual tax rebate that no economist would have regarded as effective, for reasons explained by Milton Friedman more than 40 years ago. The Afghan surge promise was regretted by Obama himself as soon as he came into office, and he spent 9 months looking for ways to evade it.

The evidence that President Obama didn't believe that a middle class tax cut would be a good idea is what, David? Nothing? And the evidence that President Obama didn't believe in a surge in Afghanistan is that it took nine months for him to implement the surge, he's stood squarely behind it for going on two years, and based upon similar principles of humanitarian intervention recently involved the U.S. in a similar venture in Libya? Who are you going to believe, David Frum or your lying eyes.

If we were to look for the truth, we might observe that the tax cut portion of the stimulus bill was included as part of an effort to gain Republican votes. In retrospect, that was a mistake, but at the time it didn't seem obvious that the Republican Party would work so overtly to harm the nation's recovery in order to advance themselves politically, or that such an approach would work. As the 2010 elections demonstrate, it did work, and the Republicans have, if anything, since doubled down on their tactics. It's "wimpy" for the President to propose that tax cuts could help an economic recovery, to express concern about the size of the deficit and national debt, and to engage in a surge and now a slow withdrawal from Afghanistan? Then few of the Republican contenders can be described as anything but uber-wimps.

Is it Safe for Republicans to Make Sense?

While Newt Gingrich scurries away from his accurate assessment of Paul Ryan's plan, apparently because Republicans aren't allowed to disagree with the plan, Paul Ryan himself seems to be scurrying away from his plan, or at least insisting that it isn't fair for the media to accurately describe its effects. I guess in an odd way that makes sense - the two men agree that it's completely unfair for the media to accurately report on their words, beliefs and actions.

But don't worry - David Brooks tells us that there are two or three reasonable people in the Republican Party, and they're talking to him.

Already many consultants are telling Republicans to drop austerity and go back on offense: Spend 2012 accusing the Democrats of sponsoring death panels. The Democrats will spend 2012 accusing Republicans of ending Medicare. Whichever party demagogues best wins.

But, over the past few days, I’ve spoken with a number of Republicans — in Congress and elsewhere — who don’t want to do that. They fervently believe the country is in peril. They want to find a way to reduce the debt without committing political suicide.

Great. And their names are... off the record? It is such a toxic environment within the Republican Party that you can't even make an on-the-record statement against demagoguery?

Brooks proposes that the Republicans should increase taxes on the middle class by eliminating employer's tax deduction for employee health insurance, and further "raise tax revenues on the rich". He does not claim that any of his anonymous Republicans support this idea. I suspect he's playing a rhetorical game - "Here's how the Democrats are being reasonable, while these are reasonable things the Republicans could do," rather than admitting that his ideas, whatever their merits (and if you read his columns you know that they mostly lack merit), have no traction in the Republican Party.

I sometimes wonder if Brooks should stick with his pop psychology and thinly disguised book reports, as it seems that when he starts presenting his own ideas he goes quickly and hopelessly wrong. His memory of recent history suggests he takes in more fumes from the beltway than he does facts:

Republicans won in 2010 because the working class fled from the Democrats’ top-down big government liberalism.

From the perspective of the reality-based community it had a lot to do with a crappy economy, anger over bailouts that were for the most part a continuation of the prior administration's policies, Republican demagoguery over Medicare ("death panels", "Medicare cuts to pay for other (undeserving) people's health insurance") and stimulus spending ("The stimulus bill was horrible. I'm proud to have delivered $50 billion in government spending to my district, and am happy to pretend it had nothing to do with the horrible stimulus bill). Oh - and let's not forget Republican demagoguery on immigration.

Brooks defines the issues that he believes motivate voters who, when not instructing the government to keep its hands off of their Medicare, supposedly want small government:

But these families have seen the pillars of their world dissolve — jobs, family structure, neighborhood cohesion.

Jobs? That would be "It's the economy, stupid," but what's this nonsense about "family structure?" Which faction of Republicans votes for Members of Congress based upon their concern that Aunt Sallie and Uncle Bob might get a divorce? Is Brooks in fact talking about demagoguery on gay marriage - a return to the culture wars, a successful topic for Republican demagoguery in past elections? "Neighborhood cohesion?" Yeah, I guess we are talking in silly code. What does that mean if not, "People of the wrong color are moving into our neighborhoods."

They need to lay out the facts showing that Medicare is unstable and on a path to collapse, as Representative Paul Ryan is doing. But they also need to enmesh Medicare reform within an agenda to build solid communities: more money for community colleges and technical schools, an infrastructure bank, a values agenda to shore up marriage and family cohesion, tax holidays to help the unemployed start businesses, tax reform to limit special interest power.

First, Paul Ryan is not laying out facts. His "budget" is a pile of nonsense, and he is being anything but honest about his plan to privatize Medicare. Second, as Brooks acknowledged up front, Republicans are running scared because when voters recognize the implications of Ryan's plans they hate them. And it's not even clear that voters yet fully understand that Ryan's plan to gut and privatize Medicare is not so much about preserving health insurance for seniors as it is about providing yet another round of massive tax cuts to the wealthy.

In terms of Brooks' concepts for Republican spending, yes, it's easy to spend more money on community colleges. But if you really want to get that done you would be talking about potentially peeling off enough Republicans to join in a Democratic effort to provide education funds - because the Republican Party is all about cutting and they've already promised more in cuts than they can deliver. "Build solid communities"? Could you be less specific and just maybe sound a bit more (to Republican ears) like a big government hippie? An "infrastructure bank" - a centralized agency charged with arranging finance for infrastructure projects - with an eye toward budgeting for and increasing spending on infrastructure? Even if you recognize the sorry state of our nation's infrastructure, do you seriously believe the Republican Party is going to get on board with that? A "values agenda", meaning... what other than culture war demagoguery? "Tax holidays" to help the unemployed start businesses? Pie, meet sky. "Tax reform to limit special interest power"? Not even John McCain seems inclined to support that type of reform.

When David Frum looks at the Republican Party that drummed him out, he sees a need to transform that party into the type of party that might adopt some of Brooks' theoretical platform. He should be paying attention to Brooks: It's safer and much more lucrative to pretend that party already exists.

Looking the Part Probably Isn't Enough

Robert Reich's comments about Mitt Romney remind me of some of the "man crush" comments from four years ago...

Why is Mitt doing so well? Partly because Obama's positions are by now well known, while voters can project anything they want onto Mitt. It's also because much of the public continues to worry about the economy, jobs, and the price of gas at the pump, and they inevitably blame the president.

But I suspect something else is at work here, too. To many voters, President Obama sounds and acts presidential, but he doesn't look it. Mitt Romney is the perfect candidate for people uncomfortable that their president is black. Mitt is their great white hope.

The thing is, Romney looked and sounded considerably more presidential than John McCain, at least if you didn't listen to the substance of his comments. And that should scare you a bit, because McCain wasn't exactly strong on substance.

When you look at Romney's character, or lack thereof, you can see why he makes the modern Republican Party nervous - while he says the right things on most litmus test issues, he has previously spoken on most of those issues while taking the opposite position - and some of his past speeches seem considerably more earnest and sincere than his present repudiations. If you want a competent, hard-working President, dare I suggest that Romney isn't your man - I joked some time ago about candidates like Romney, Huckabee and Palin who attacked the President's résumé as too thin while having, themselves, given up anything resembling an actual job - that is, for years, the only thing they have been running are their mouths. With all due respect to the fact that Huckabee and Palin took jobs with Fox News, that's more of an affirmation of my point than a repudiation. Even as governor, Romney seemed principally concerned with positioning himself for higher office. (Little did he know that a conservative health reform plan that is by many measures quite successful could be his downfall.)

But, having taken full advantage of his father's name, wealth, connections to build his own fortune as a corporate raider, back during a stock market boom, Romney apparently makes the business community comfortable. Within that world he probably does come across as substantive and sincere - a man who will help fight unions, business taxes, and any other threat to corporate profits. As one of his biggest backers, David Frum, notes,

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has been plugging along, off-camera, raising money, building support among business leaders and county party chairs.

If only he can get Roger Ailes and the Fox News media machine on his side, Frum's story goes, he'll have the nomination locked up. What big issue could it be that would keep somebody like Ailes from embracing Romney as a true, pro-business culture warrior? Could it be... health care? That he doesn't believe that Romney will in fact work hard to overturn a national health plan that was created largely in the image of the one Romney implemented in Massachusetts?

The savaging of Newt Gingrich by the right-wing media should give you some sense of how uncomfortable certain people in power are with the idea of a 1990's-style Republican President - somebody who is by any reasonable measure a conservative Republican but who rose to prominence at the tail end of an era of occasional bipartisanship and fewer litmus tests. What if, when elected President, they go back to that form of governance, pull the Republican Party back toward the center, allow healthcare reform to become fully implemented, refuse to slash Medicare and Social Security.... No matter how broad his shoulders or presidential his hair style, and with due respect to why David Frum wishes for his nomination, I don't think Romney can cultivate a look powerful enough to overcome his shortcomings to the present Republican Party.

The Contest is Back On?

Recall the Frum / Gerson / Thiessen contest? Gerson's making a decent effort, but at this point Thiessen has an incredible lead.

David Frum on the Fourth Estate

Since I'm dredging up memories of Canada, perhaps a bit unfairly, I sometimes wonder if David Frum benefits from the fact that next to nobody in this country knows who his mother was. In fairness, among U.S. conservative political commentators, nepotism reigns supreme. By moving to the U.S. Frum gave up the direct advantage of having a famous mother, although I expect that his family's political and media connections provided him with a significant boost even after he crossed the border.

Perhaps I need to take a couple of steps backward. Who is David Frum? He's a conservative commentator, originally from Canada, and son of the late and highly respected Canadian journalist Barbara Frum. I remember Barbara Frum most clearly from her role as host of "The Journal", a news magazine that came on after "The National", the evening news programming on CBC television. Despite watching The Journal for a period of years, I didn't get a sense of Frum's politics. Based upon David's politics I suspect that she, her husband, or both were relatively conservative by Canadian standards, but while on the air she didn't push an ideology.

Once he stopped personally attempting to impose ideological litmus tests on conservatives, and once he was cast out of the inner circle of conservative commentators, apparently for his suggestion that the Republicans erred by attempting to stonewall healthcare reform, Frum adopted the public position that conservative litmus tests can be counter-productive and started to speak out against the dominant Republican media personalities, and their influence on the Republican Party.

On a recent episode of Real Time, Frum made a comment to the effect that we don't want media figures influencing political decision-making. His statement was not specific to the Republican Party, but was offered as a general statement about the way things should be. It did not appear to occur to Frum that he is essentially a media personality who would very much like to influence the political debate. But I think it's important to point out that there are no media figures on the left who compare to Limbaugh, and even with his declining influence there are none that compare to Beck. The last comparable media figure who comes to mind would be Walter Cronkite, a man credited with helping to extract this country from the Vietnam War.

Now you can make an argument that politics don't belong in the media, or that news figures should be careful not to influence policy debates, and... well, growing up in Canada Frum perhaps didn't have much exposure to the First Amendment, its origins and purpose, but he should be sufficiently familiar with journalism to recognize that you cannot keep opinion out, that opinion can actually contribute positively to a debate, and that responsible journalists can reasonably assert that one side in a debate has a better argument, or that the other side has its facts wrong. (For all of The Journal's objectivity, the joke song about Brian Mulroney that I mentioned here was aired on that show, aired as part of a brief recurring segment devoted to political humor.) Frum must be familiar with the Canadian news magazine show, "The Fifth Estate," something of a Canadian "60 Minutes", and even if only out of that exposure it's difficult to believe that he's unaware of the concept of the media as the "fourth estate", an unofficial societal or political force.

If you accept that the media can responsibly take issues on controversial subjects of the day (as news magazines routinely do, by choosing which subjects to cover and what position to advance), you can draw a distinction between the media figures that Frum is willing to name as having a corrosive impact on political culture and those that might act responsibly, but whose work might advance a political agenda inconsistent with Frum's preferred policies. Or, for that matter, to admit that he's a media figure and to reconcile his own work to advance a specific political agenda through the media with his implication that doing so is a bad thing.

[Edited to correct some data corruption from the Blogger outage.]

Frum on the Right-Wing Noise Machine

David Frum has published a blog post that rebukes the conservative media for its shameful conduct, focusing on the Shirley Sherrod case.

Whether it's a change of heart or an end to self-censorship, it would have been nice had Frum been writing stuff like this before he was fired from AEI.

Wretched Public Policy Arguments

If Paul Krugman is correct, it becomes more understandable why editorials from AEI "scholars" seem so often to be wretched, weak in analysis and careless with facts.

In discussing the [David] Frum firing [by AEI], Bruce Bartlett asserts that AEI has muzzled its health-care experts, because the truth is that they agree with a lot of what Obama is proposing.

Sort of an, "If you don't have anything nice to say for the benefit of our corporate sponsors, don't say anything at all"? Ensuring that your most knowledgeable experts either toe the corporate line or remain silent?

Update: "They’re hiring Jonah Goldberg and Marc Thiessen." As I was saying... wretched.

It's Hard to Stop a Moving Train

Ages ago, I attended high school with the son of a prominent Canadian political figure - and by prominent I mean, when the party was in power, not just to the extent of "getting invited to dinner at the Prime Minister's house," but having the Prime Minister come over to dinner at your house. (If you're wondering, it was a public high school.) He was a smart kid, opinionated (I have nothing against that), liked to debate, and was conversant about politics. Although we were well short of voting age, one day he asked me what political party I favored. I shared my opinion of the political parties, then asked the same of him. "What do you think? You know who my father is." Sort of an "Alex Keating" thing, or perhaps "Alex Keating, Jr." - locked into a political ideology at an early age and living it without reflection.

Although I make no claim of insight into the genesis of David Frum's conservatism, when I read David Frum's columns, he brings to mind my former classmate. The man is bright, capable of discussing the issues of the day, and usually attempts to provide a solid foundation for his arguments. He seems to have accepted that his brand of conservatism is not particularly welcome in the current incarnation of the Republican Party, and is making as strong an effort as he can to forge his own initiative to rescue the party from itself. I suspect I would find him personable and, given the opportunity, we would have some interesting political discussions. But at the same time I sense that he spends a lot of time examining and reexamining issues other than the conservative orthodoxy he has embraced.

I can say this: growing up in Canada, spending most of those years in the province that spawned the CCF (eventually the NDP) and the program of socialized medicine that eventually became Canada's Medicare system, it is really hard to scare me with stories of "socialized medicine" or with claims that U.S. politicians are "socialists". The Medicare system served me well in my childhood and teen years, and it has served my parents well during the decades since. I have no complaints about the care I've been able to receive in the U.S., save for the periods when I was uninsured and underinsured. But fables of rationing and waiting lists don't phase me. Every system has problems, most of which are related to funding. If anything is shocking, it's how many problems our own system has despite the incredible amount of funding it receives from both private and public sources.

I thus have to question when I read David Frum's commentary on healthcare reform if he has any actual concern about the substance of reform - if he has concern over access to or quality of medical care under even a single payer plan - or if he's more concerned about universal health insurance as a threat to his ideology. That is, I see little sign that he believes that universal coverage, however accomplished, is a bad thing of itself, but instead he seems to fear that once implemented it will hobble the implementation of his vision of conservatism.

Frum's Waterloo column suggests the latter - that the Republican Party should have cooperated with reform to somehow make it more "conservative" - not expanding Medicaid, finding other (unidentified) sources of funding... and maybe it would have been possible for such a bill to have been fashioned. But perhaps the difference is that Frum accepts that a significant healthcare overhaul would be possible without threatening the future of his version of conservatism, while the Republican Party views any expansion of health insurance as incompatible with its vision for the future. In both cases it can be argued that politics are being placed ahead of what's good for the country - it's difficult to credit to genuine differences of ideology conduct the following conduct as summarized by Frum:

Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead.

The most favorable interpretation is that the Republican Party expected their arguments to lose on their merits, and the alternative explanation is that the Republican Party didn't care about the merits, choosing under either interpretation to try to drown out the debate with lies and vitriol. Frum wants to believe that the Republican Party somehow lost its way, and could have been led back to an honest, reasoned debate of the bill on its merits. Maybe that would have been true twenty years ago, but I get no sense that the current Republican Party has any interest in taking a higher road, even though it remains theoretically capable of doing so.

I have read suggestions that, after healthcare reform, the Republican Party can't have "another Reagan". Absolute nonsense. During Reagan's era, if you recall, the British Conservative Party was led by his sister in arms, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She broke unions, privatized industry, and went to war with Argentina. (Good times, good times....) No, what we're really talking about is that once an effective universal healthcare program is implemented, the country will not want to go back to the "free market" approach that preceded reform. We've seen that in Britain with the Conservative Party, in Canada with its version of the Conservative Party, and in every other industrialized nation. People may want the system to be fixed or improved, but propose an "American-style system" and (if you're not joking) you're not going to stay in office.

Seriously, for all their talk of how Medicare is not sustainable, the Republicans won't propose simple legislation that would make it more sustainable - such as implementing need-based copayments and deductibles to have people who can afford to do so pay more money out of pocket before their "free" benefits kick in. Instead you get "ideas" that range from "Medicare vouchers for private insurance coverage" to "eliminating Medicare"... and there's not much distance between those ideas. (But heavens no, don't cut subsidies for private insurers in the Medicare Advantage program.) If you listen only to Republicans you might think that the only choices we have are to maintain the status quo or scrap the entire Medicare system... interspersed with angry opposition to any Democratic Party proposals to cut Medicare benefits. That opposition panders to the elderly, while simultaneously helping to ensure that Medicare remains on an unsustainable path - what the Republican party might deem a "win-win". But it's wholly irresponsible

For all the Republican griping about how "the public doesn't support this bill", that's not what they're afraid of. It's easy, after all, to overturn an unpopular bill. Their fear, and this includes Frum's fear, is that calls to "spend enough" to support the system and fix its flaws will end the "Club for Growth"-type dreams of a nation in which the wealthy pay virtually no tax, and domestic spending is pared to the bone... more accurately, to the marrow. If the reform bill succeeds in its goals, the next time a G.W. comes along with a plan to slash taxes for the rich, he'll first have to explain why he's not using that money to fix or improve the national healthcare system. It's that brand of conservatism that is facing its Waterloo, and hence it is that brand of conservatism that remains desperate to kill reform.

Whose Victory Is It, Again?

While he's correct that passing a flawed healthcare reform bill is better than failing to act, Michael Tomasky opines,

No matter how frustrated or angry you are about what's not in this bill, is the proper response to that really to strike a posture that amounts to giving Republicans, who will never do anything to promote or even gesture toward universal healthcare when they have power, their biggest political win on Capitol Hill in at least six or seven and arguably in 15 years? That's just silly.

The Republican Party has been actively fighting universal healthcare for... what is it now... fifty years? Under the concept that if it passes it will prove popular, and will result in their becoming more like Britain's Conservative Party - able to attack Social Security and publicly funded healthcare at the margins, but largely stuck with a popular government-run system that they can neither destroy or defund. Hence we had David Frum fretting,

Instead of a healthcare reform to slow cost increases, Democrats in the Senate seem to be converging upon an expansion of Medicare to include age 55-64 year-olds and an expansion in Medicaid up to some higher multiple of the poverty limit. You might wonder why they didn’t do this before: expanding existing programs is always easier than creating new ones. So now instead of a new system that attempts to control costs, we’re just going to have a bigger and more expensive version of the old system, with a few tinkers around the edges. Republicans could have been architects of improvement, instead we made ourselves impotent spectators as things get radically worse. Plus – the bad new Democratic proposal will likely be less unpopular with voters than their more promising earlier proposal. Nice work everybody.

Medicaid is mentioned, but Frum's concern was about a popular, successful expansion of Medicare - something he apparently saw as worse than even a public plan. And while digging that up, what did I find? Frum's celebration of Joe Lieberman as the man who saved the Republican Party:

[The reform bill is] not good, but it’s not what we were threatened with two days ago. Thank you Joe Lieberman.

Whatever good comes to the Democratic Party from healthcare reform, the legislative victory was a Republican victory and, in a single flip-flop, it was delivered by Sen. Joseph Isadore Lieberman.

The Public Option

Josh Marshall's a smart guy, but I think he's about as wrong as wrong can be on the public option.

Now, there are many people who look at this and say that the bill(s) under discussion are so anemic that they're maybe not worth fighting for at all. And that's certainly a legitimate opinion. But I think there's another question. Considering how down to the wire this is, is it really worth holding up everything else contained in the bill when the point of contention, the public option, is as measly as it is?

The same thing probably could have been argued about the first version of Social Security or the first version of Medicare - "It's measly, so what's the big deal if it doesn't pass." Well, whether you like or hate the current version of those programs, I don't think you're apt to argue that they're "no big deal". People like David Frum and Martin Feldstein wouldn't be telling us that any public option, no matter how "measly", will inexorably bring about the end of private health insurance if the opponents of the public option shared Marshall's perspective. It's easy to hobble the public option, version 1, but it's very difficult to stop the public option from later being made viable.

Marshall follows up with a valid point about "up and down" votes, but I think he's jumping the gun:

If you go back to the earlier part of this decade when the cloture/filibuster issue became a big deal, largely on the Supreme Court nominations front, the right made a big push on the outside about the issue of allowing up or down votes (i.e., 51 vote majorities) simply as a matter of principle

So why not do that right now? Because the bill is advancing without that type of push. The best time to call for an "up or down vote", and to press people to "allow an up or down vote" is when the bill's up for final passage. Do that too soon and not only do you give opponents of the bill time to prepare and rehearse rebuttals, you risk inspiring a yawn from the media on the fourth, fifth or sixth round of voting when you want the headline to be, "Health reform opponents block up or down vote."