Executive Orders - What, Me Worry?

On the editorial pages of a newspaper that can scarcely pass up an opportunity to beat the drums for war, Ruth Marcus has taken up the horror of the executive order. She's not employing in the over-the-top rhetoric of Ross Douthat, but she is concerned about the ever-present slippery slope,

Every Democrat should be nervous about President Obama’s plan for unilateral action on immigration reform.

Not because of the impact on an already gridlocked Congress, or because it risks inflaming an increasingly hostile public. Democrats should be nervous about the implications for presidential power, and the ability of a future Republican president to act on his or her own.

Perhaps Democrats have short memories, because it seems to me that we saw ample evidence of what a Republican president can accomplish through executive orders when G.W. Bush signed a huge stack of them while on his way out of the White House. Leaving that aside for the moment, we're speaking specifically of executive orders that are being proposed because Congress cannot or will not do its job. I'm not particularly concerned about setting a precedent, as there's nothing particularly unique or special about what President Obama is proposing. For that matter, were the President to refrain from acting, I have no reason to believe that a future Republican president would exercise similar restraint.

The very first concern Marcus raises is interesting, but not in the way she imagines,

First, is there a limiting principle that would constrain the president’s authority to effectively legalize everyone in the country?

Obviously, when we're speaking of this type of executive action, we're speaking of a context in which the White House wants to address an issue on which Congress refuses to speak. Executive orders must be consistent with existing law, and if Congress is willing to pass legislation it can either avoid the need for an executive order or preempt the president's plan.

Marcus's slippery slope rests on the idea that, in the face of Congressional dysfunction, a President may stake out the most extreme position he can arguably take under existing law. That's possible -- but I'm not sure that it would be a bad thing -- not because I want Presidents to sidestep Congress, but because that type of action may be the only thing that is sufficient to light a fire under Congress's posterior such that it actually does its job. If Congress won't act when faced with the most extreme interpretations of existing law, it's a fair inference that the demagoguery of its members doesn't amount to much and that they find that interpretation to be acceptable. Would it be a bigger threat to democracy for the President to stake out extreme positions, presenting the loudest possible "put up or shut up" to Congress, or for the President to tiptoe up to the edges of what might inspire Congressional action while taking advantage of that institution's unwillingness to do its job?

Marcus also argues,

Second, is there a limiting principle that would constrain future presidents inclined against enforcing other laws with which they don’t agree — and on which they’ve been unable to convince Congress to act accordingly?

As previously noted, we're speaking of executive action taken in the face of congressional inaction. Although it is conceivable that a future president might refuse to enforce the laws favored by his own party, it's far more likely that such a president would be in a position to simply ask his party to amend the law.

If a President refuses to uphold the laws of the United States in a manner that Congress finds unacceptable, Congress has a well-known constitutional remedy: impeachment. If Congress chooses not to pursue a legislative remedy, and chooses not to initiate impeachment proceedings, it again becomes difficult to regard any table-thumping condemnations of a president as anything but noise.

The situation in which Marcus's concern might have some weight would be one in which the White House and one chamber of Congress is controlled by one party, and the other chamber of Congress is controlled by another. In such a scenario, the chamber aligned with the White House would have to be sufficiently supportive of the President's actions that it would refuse to support impeachment and conviction, but be unwilling or unable to pass legislation addressing the issue due to the divided government. But legislators have easy access to the media, to make their case against a president. The House of Representatives can slow down or shut down the government, or vote to impeach even if it expects that the Senate will acquit the president. The Senate can similarly slow down the government, not only by impeding the progress of legislation but also by putting the brakes on executive appointments, and can also shut down the government. The tools may not be as precise as would be ideal for the theoretical task at hand, but Congress is anything but powerless.

The fact that I'm not particularly impressed with Marcus's arguments should not be interpreted as my supporting the idea of the executive forming policy through executive orders on matters that are best addressed through legislation. My concern is less about the slippery slope -- a form of argument that can be applied to any action, no matter how trivial -- and is much more about what happens when Congress won't or can't perform its duties. Unlike Marcus or the various members of her employer's editorial board, I find the issue of greater concern to be the fact that we are involved in a new war in the Middle East predicated upon an authorization that cannot reasonably be said to apply to the present circumstances, yet Congress is content to let the war wage on while refusing to pass a new authorization bill that could define its goals or limit its scope. There's not even a hint of concern from the editorial board that we should have congressional authorization for war before we get into yet another armed conflict in the Middle East.

The Washington Post editorial board wants the President to commit ground forces, in the form of special forces, to the front lines of the war with ISIS. It is chomping at the bit for the President to declare direct war on what remains of the Assad regime, without any apparent concern for what would follow the collapse of that regime. But one thing about which the editorial board is conspicuously unconcerned? The absence of Congressional authorization for the present war, let alone the escalated, potentially disastrous war that they propose.

To put it mildly, I'm not thrilled that the President is proposing unilateral action in the face of congressional gridlock. It would be better if Congress would do its job. But at least in the context of executive orders we're speaking not of Marcus's slippery slope, but of the President's following precedents set by prior administrations, and proposing lawful orders that are consistent with existing law. When it comes to war, the Constitution attempts to create a clear framework for the separation of powers, with wars to be initiated by Congress. If you're going to pretend concern about a possible constitutional crisis, can't you give that one more than a shrug and a yawn?

The Senate Embarrasses Itself

Ruth Marcus has this right:

For Republicans to block one of President Obama’s nominees is dog-bites-man non-news. For members of the president’s party to defect is more notable. And for Democrats to worry more about their political hides than a nominee’s fitness for service — as happened in the Senate this week — is simply revolting.

In a sense her claim that the President "fail[ed] to adequately anticipate and defuse the problem" is a truism, but she doesn't suggest what he might have done differently. The Republicans who voted against Debo Adegbile did so because they find it to be politically advantageous to oppose the president, because they prefer a neutered civil rights division, because they are stupid, or some combination thereof, so the President wasn't going to win their votes. The Democrats who joined them did so because they are cowards. They knew the facts, but feared facing a political consequence if they voted based on the facts instead of pandering to factions they feared would vote against them in coming elections. What argument would change that?

How About Taking Responsibility For the Medications You Take

Ruth Marcus seems oblivious to the fact that sedating medications, including Ambien, are frequently abused.

[Kerry] Kennedy may have taken the pill by mistake, they contended, but she ought to have known she was impaired and pulled over.

Excuse me, but maybe they should have tried taking this drug before filing criminal charges. Ambien and other sleeping pills are powerful. You take Ambien, and 15 to 30 minutes later, you begin to zonk out. A toxicologist who testified at Kennedy’s trial — for the prosecution, no less — said that someone under the influence of Ambien could fail to recognize that she was having a problem, or even to remember, later, what happened.

I think we can infer from Marcus's statement that she has taken Ambien, and thus knows how sedating it is. What Marcus probably has not seen is what happens when somebody takes Ambien and deliberately stays awake. The superficial affect is one of significant alcohol intoxication. Why do some people do that? Just as with abuse of common benzodiazepines, ecause they like the way it makes them feel, and some of them use other drugs or alcohol at the same time so that they can enjoy a magnifying effect.

Ambien may be something of an extreme case, given how quickly the sleepiness can come on, but how far would Marcus extend her "Let's assume it was an accident" rationale to other sleep aids? She draws a distinction between "medications with drowsiness as a side effect, [and] the ones whose sole purpose is sedation", but why? Many people take Benadryl to sleep, and sometimes pharmacists recommend it as a non-prescription sleep aid. Many people take opiate and opioid medications for pain, but they can be highly sedating and are commonly abused.

Marcus seems to feel that nobody who drives down a road after taking Ambien should ever face a criminal charge for driving while impaired by drugs, even if they injure or kill somebody. I have no problem working from the perspective that if you are too drugged to drive you shouldn't get behind the wheel, even if you took the wrong medication by accident. When somebody is intoxicated behind the wheel, I don't mind putting the impetus on that person to convince me both that it was a mistake and that they had no reasonable opportunity to recognize the mistake so as to get off the road. Kerry Kennedy was able to convince a jury that she took Ambien by accident, and didn't recognize its effect in time to safely stop her car. Marcus thinks that's too high a price for Kennedy and other Ambien users to pay, but it's not as if either of them are unaware of the dangers of that drug. They are both certainly aware of this case:

U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy said Friday that he will enter a rehabilitation program after crashing his car on Capitol Hill a day earlier....

He said in a statement Thursday evening that he was apparently disoriented at the time of the crash after taking the prescribed amounts of a sleep aid and an anti-nausea drug.

"I am deeply concerned about my reaction to the medication and my lack of knowledge of the accident that evening. But I do know enough to know that I need to seek expert help," he said Friday....

In his Thursday evening statement, Kennedy said he had returned home after final votes in the House of Representatives around midnight Wednesday and taken the sleep aid Ambien and an anti-nausea drug....

In his comments Friday, Kennedy said, "The recurrence of an addiction problem can be triggered by things that happen in every day life, such as taking a common treatment for a stomach flu.

Assuming she takes Ambien, Marcus, I expect, is very careful with Ambien due to the stories she recounts, including one that put one of her own children in danger. How many stories do we need, and how close to home do they have to hit, before we can reasonably expect people to look at their pills and read their pill bottles before swallowing a sleeping pill then getting behind the wheel of a car?

I won't argue with Marcus that manufacturers could create pill colors and shapes, or package sleep aids in a different manner, and thereby all-but-eliminate the "I was confused" defense. Perhaps at that point Marcus would accept that people intoxicated by Ambien should be subject to prosecution for driving in that condition. But for now, if people have multiple, similar-looking medications, they owe it to themselves and others not to confuse their pills. If people who have serious health conditions requiring them to juggle dozens of medications can keep their pills straight, I think it's reasonable to ask that people with minor medical conditions and two or three prescriptions to do the same, more so when incidents of carelessness will pose serious risk to themselves and others.

Conventional Wisdom and Structural Unemployment

I saw this argument from Paul Solman, who I can't help but believe should have known better,

Liberal economist and much-respected friend Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where he keeps the Beat the Press blog, has appeared on PBS NewsHour often over the years, and recently on these pages in "Don't Blame the Robots." He appeared here again Wednesday, decrying what he called the media's "mindless" budget reporting.

But when he wrote on his blog on Aug. 3 that "[t]he PBS Newshour won the gold medal for journalistic malpractice on Friday (Aug. 2) by having David Brooks and Ruth Marcus tell the country what the Friday jobs report means," he seemed curiously harsh and patently partisan.

I don't think it's either, actually, save in the sense that we're supposed to tiptoe around the fact that a lot of the analysis offered by "serious" news shows revolves around talking heads who know little about the subjects that they are discussing, but get more and more air time by virtue of their past history of being talking heads, and that it's thus "curiously harsh" to note that this phenomenon represents a manifestation of the Peter Principle. Had they invited Jenny McCarthy on to discuss the science behind vaccines, I suspect that Solman would have taken issue both with the invitation and with the implication that she had special expertise. Yet that is exactly what shows like PBS Newshour do when they present as authorities non-economists who pontificate on the economy despite a long, documented history of having paid very little attention to what actual economists have to say.

"Brooks and Marcus got just about everything they said completely wrong," Baker continued. "Starting at the beginning, Brooks noted the slower than projected job growth and told listeners: 'Yes, I think there's a consensus growing both on left and right that we -- the structural problems are becoming super obvious...'"

But, Baker insisted, "It's hard to know what on earth Brooks thinks he is talking about. There is nothing close to a consensus on either the left or right that the economy's problems are structural, as opposed to a simple lack of demand (i.e. people spending money). This is shown clearly by the overwhelming support on the Federal Reserve Board for its policy of quantitative easing."

Solmon notes that Paul Krugman agreed with Baker, then observed that while Brooks and Marcus aren't in fact describing an economic consensus their argument demonstrates how "Washington conventional wisdom... has clearly swung to the view that our high unemployment is 'structural', not something that could be solved simply by boosting demand".

If I took umbrage at those statements, my first response would be to explore whether or not there was a consensus among economists as to whether the economy's problems are structural. I would also wonder why David Brooks, who occasionally takes ill-informed potshots at his New York Times colleague, Paul Krugman, is not aware of Paul Krugman's years of argument on this subject. But instead....

Look, folks, there may indeed be no "consensus growing on left and right" about the predominance of structural unemployment, as David Brooks alleged. Just look at how vigorously Krugman and Baker took the other side. But I rather doubt Krugman's assertion that there is an "actual economic consensus" on the unemployment debate that favors his cyclical explanation to the exclusion of the structural. Unless, of course, Krugman means a consensus among economists he agrees with.

Why assume anything? Why not call other economists and ask?

A confession: Brooks is a friend for whom I have great respect, as I do for Ruth Marcus.

Well, that explains it... just not in a manner I find satisfactory.

Unlike Krugman and Baker, my main job for 36 years now has been to interview not only economists like them, but hirers and hirees, firers and firees. I've done so through both recessions and recoveries alike. I wheedled soundbites out of the drearily downhearted high tech-workers of the late 1970s and spoke to the happily hopeful hires of the late 1990s.

Then, friendship or no, there's really no excuse for the assumption. Solmon did find "A 2011 paper from the San Francisco Fed attributed 60 percent of long-term unemployment to cyclicality and 40 percent to structural factors," which is at best tepid support for Brook's' assertion that the issue is structural, but that two-year-old paper seems to be the best support he could find for Brooks' claimed consensus.

I'll admit, when I looked at the unemployment data, the fact that many workers displaced by the great recession were never again going to earn the sort of wage they had previously enjoyed, and the downward pressure on the middle class, my initial reaction to "This isn't a structural issue" was "Say way?" But in fact what Krugman and Baker are discussing is something else - the notion that there has been a seismic change in the economy such that we have to simply accept a higher unemployment rate than we have historically seen. Baker, Krugman and others have rebutted that "structural change" argument repeatedly and convincingly, to the point that if you're a business and economics reporter and are only just now taking note of it it's safe to say that you've chosen not to pay attention to material you should be covering. But Solmon seems mostly interested in the issue as a left-right political debate, and thus seems to think it's enough to circle back to Brooks as an authority.

Solmon gets partial credit for allowing Dean Baker to refute the "structural" argument, but he loses points for a response in which he changes the subject,

Baker's may be the best possible summation of the cyclicalist argument. Moreover, he may well be right: throw enough money at the economy, and at some point, everyone will be employed.

But if economics teaches us anything, it's that every decision has both benefits and costs. What might be the cost of Baker's Keynesian "Trillion-Dollar Solution"?

Baker, of course, didn't argue that the only way back to full employment was a $trillion stimulus, he simply described a theoretical means by which the economy could be brought to full employment. When you introduce an idea with, "Imagine someone found a $1 trillion bill in the street and decided that, as a public service, she would spend the money over the next 12 months to boost the economy", it's pretty obvious that you're not describing something you believe is likely to occur. Solmon then speculates about how productive newly created jobs would be, an argument that is in no way tied to the present time or economy. Solmon argues,

If the cyclicalists are right, spend a trillion dollars and new jobs will eventually emerge, as they indeed regularly have throughout American (and world) history. If the structuralists are right, however, history is in the process of changing and the government jobs will last only as long as the trillion dollars.

But the discussion was about consensus, right? And Solmon has completely abandoned the pretense that the consensus described by Brooks exists on either the left of the right. Solmon closes by offering a comment from his prior thread, in which a tech graduate describes being heavily recruited, with generous wage offers and stock options,

Those opportunities, however, are out there only for those with a set of specialized skills. If the structure of the U.S. economy is changing to employ those who have such skills and disemploy those who don't, the structuralists have a point.

But again, same as it ever was. When changes in technology and the economy led to the demise of the livery stable and blacksmith's shop, even as blacksmiths and stable hands struggled to find new work, other people were entering the job market with a very different set of skills and with far better job and income prospects. When the domestic garment industry collapsed in favor of offshore production, medical school graduates were doing better than ever. The fact that wages or opportunities in one corner of the economy are reduced even as opportunities exist "for those with a set of specialized skills" is not new - it's history repeating itself.

Ruth Marcus, Susceptible to Self-Satire

Ruth Marcus appears amused that some of her peers can't recognize obvious satire,

The item was too delicious to resist: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, he of the don’t-worry, be-happy approach to the federal deficit, had been forced to declare personal bankruptcy.

Except it wasn’t true. The tidbit was satire, from a Web site called the Daily Currant. The Currant’s “tell” was obvious to anyone who took introductory economics: Krugman, it said, had attempted, like a good Keynesian, to “spend his way out of debt,” after “racking up $84,000 in a single month . . . in pursuit of rare Portuguese wines and 19th-century English cloth” — a wink-wink reference to the classic examples of comparative advantage in international trade.

The piece would be stronger, of course, if it didn't open with Marcus caricaturing Krugman's views, or even if it were clear that Marcus knew what she was doing. It would have taken even the more credulous of her peers mere seconds, minutes at most, to determine the source of the Krugman satire, or that Krugman had not declared bankruptcy. So what's Marcus's excuse for not knowing the views of an economist who has been anything but a wallflower on these issues?

Here's Krugman on debt:

Now, the fact that federal debt isn’t at all like a mortgage on America’s future doesn’t mean that the debt is harmless. Taxes must be levied to pay the interest, and you don’t have to be a right-wing ideologue to concede that taxes impose some cost on the economy, if nothing else by causing a diversion of resources away from productive activities into tax avoidance and evasion. But these costs are a lot less dramatic than the analogy with an overindebted family might suggest....

So yes, debt matters. But right now, other things matter more. We need more, not less, government spending to get us out of our unemployment trap. And the wrongheaded, ill-informed obsession with debt is standing in the way.

And more recently:

Bear in mind that the budget doesn’t have to be balanced to put us on a fiscally sustainable path; all we need is a deficit small enough that debt grows more slowly than the economy. To take the classic example, America never did pay off the debt from World War II — in fact, our debt doubled in the 30 years that followed the war. But debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell by three-quarters over the same period....

So we do not, repeat do not, face any kind of deficit crisis either now or for years to come.

There are, of course, longer-term fiscal issues: rising health costs and an aging population will put the budget under growing pressure over the course of the 2020s. But I have yet to see any coherent explanation of why these longer-run concerns should determine budget policy right now. And as I said, given the needs of the economy, the deficit is currently too small.

In simple terms, Krugman is explaining that deficits matter, but that if they're at a sustainable level they're not a threat to the economy, and that the time to worry about balancing the budget is when the economy is booming in part so that you can avoid self-destructive austerity measures and afford sufficient stimulus spending when the economy is faltering. It doesn't seem that hard to understand... unless, as it seems, you're a Beltway pundit or a Republican partisan.

Do you remember who actually took the position that "deficits don't matter"? A guy whose administration used the Clinton surplus as an excuse to slash taxes for the rich, ran up huge deficits during a period of economic recovery, and crashed the economy on its way out of town. Did Marcus ever so much as whisper a word of criticism? If so, I missed it.

But, oh, something seems familiar about Marcus's quip. "Don't-worry, be-happy." Oh, right, the time Marcus humiliated herself by trying to take on Krugman in public. (Do I give her and her peers too much credit by assuming she's been introduced to at least one take-down of that piece? Mark Thoma: "Ruth Marcus Tries to Show Her Beltway Badge of Seriousness"; Brad Delong piles on. Krugman commented primarily to point out that Marcus didn't understand the statement that she had used as the centerpiece of her attack.)

I really think it's time for Marcus to do the tiny bit of work that she recognizes would have saved her colleagues from embarrassment, and take the few seconds to read what Paul Krugman is actually saying about the economy and deficits, even if it's more fun to believe the satire.

Saving Money by Ending Medigap Coverage?

Among the various proposals offered by Ruth Marcus, ostensibly to help balance the budget, is this:

Another idea, from MIT’s Jonathan Gruber, would attack Medicare costs from the consumer side. It would deal with the current risk of catastrophic costs by adding an out-of-pocket maximum tied to beneficiaries’ incomes so that poorer seniors would face less risk.

But it would also heavily tax seniors’ supplemental insurance plans that fail to impose adequate cost-sharing on beneficiaries. Again, this proposal could appeal to both sides: The Obama administration has suggested limiting Medigap policies, and the Ryan approach is all about giving consumers incentive to control costs. Estimated savings: $125 billion over 10 years.

But wait - I thought the magic of markets and private insurance would "fix everything", so how is it that the healthcare market will become more rational and efficient if we all-but-eliminate Medigap coverage? Well, Ruth Marcus isn't a "free markets" fundamentalist, so I can't hang that one on her, but the underlying concept seems questionable. If Marcus is speaking of savings to Medicare, then she presupposes that without Medigap coverage a huge number of seniors will seek less care. The nominal assumption is that if you shift more cost to the patient, the patient will be more reflective about seeking care, and will be less likely to see a doctor unless it's absolutely necessary. The reality is that this type of cost-shift has a very poor record of reducing the cost of care to the consumer. The nature of Medicare makes it less likely that the consumer is going to be convinced to choose costly options, when an insurance company might require significantly less costly options to be tried first, so real savings could only be achieved if the patient foregoes medical care. From what I've seen in the private health insurance market, that's not likely to happen unless copayments become uncomfortable to afford - in which case you're going to end up denying necessary care.

And yes, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), if implemenented this proposal would result in seniors going more heavily out of pocket:

Congress should add a new charge for Medicare beneficiaries who buy supplemental insurance, according to a recommendation from its advisory panel.

The size of the fee for Medigap plans was not specified but left up to the secretary of HHS, according to a unanimous recommendation by the panel (PDF). Medicare Payment Advisory Commission members and other health policy experts have frequently criticized such plans as cost drivers for Medicare because they often cover all out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries, which critics contend leads to overutilization of healthcare services.... Marcus also suggests eliminating fee-for-service and instead "giving Medicare providers a set amount to cover beneficiaries" - an idea that is difficult to reconcile with her Medigap proposal, which appears to be predicated upon the continuation of fee-for-service with copayments for those individual services.

“This whole effort is not motivated by a desire to achieve savings, but it's really motivated by a desire to have a benefit package that works for beneficiaries,” Michael Chernew, a panel member and professor in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, said before the vote.

The person Marcus references, Jonathan Gruber, appears to believe that the impact of this change can be mitigated for less affluent seniors by offering them a greater subsidy in lieu of Medigap - that is to say, they would get what amounts to Medigap as part of their basic Medicare benefit. If the goal is to prevent "overutilization of healthcare services", does that make sense? Are we to believe that only more affluent seniors overutilize medical services, and they'll suddenly stop if they don't have Medigap coverage? For that matter, what evidence is there other than assumption that this overutilization exists, or that it can be affected by imposing a massive tax on Medigap policies?

So seriously, rather than pulling numbers out of... who even knows where, let's have an explanation of why we should believe that this proposal is sound public policy, why should believe it will result in cost savings to Medicare and the degree to which it will increase cost to seniors. Let's compare healthcare utilization rates of seniors to other nations, to see if in fact the level of care our nation's seniors receive is unusually high or is pretty typical. Let's perform a sufficient analysis that we can be reasonably sure we're not going to increase costs, by having a senior neglect a medical condition such as a diabetic abscess, odd symptoms that turn out to be a first heart attack or the onset of kidney failure, or a TIA, until they have a much more costly medical crisis.

Too much to ask? It's easier to simply roll out a massive reinvention of Medicare as a giant, nationwide experiment, but I believe it's appropriate to do some bona fide analysis and testing before engaging in a large-scale experiment that will materially affect the lives of real people, based upon little more than untested theory and assumption.

Engage in Mindless Obstruction of Congress and Win a Dinner With the President

Kathleen Parker is skeptical about the President's "charm offensive".

Not to be cynical, but does anyone really suppose that a Republican representative or senator is going to go against the party because Obama gave him a call? The president is charming, all will concede. And his smile, such a delightful reward, tempts one to, well, give a thumbs up. It was fun. It was delicious. But read my wine-stained lips: No new taxes.

“It was nothing but a PR move,” says one seasoned insider. “Obama wants to run against obstructionist Republicans. The fact of the matter is, unless something really bad happens, there’s no reason for [Republicans] at this point to cave on taxes. Why would [House Speaker] John Boehner ever cave on taxes at this point?”

Parker had to quote a "seasoned insider" to make that point? The "seasoned insider" didn't want to make a point that banal on the record? And Parker is so intent on accuracy that she uses editorial brackets, lest this anonymous person... protest? She lives in an odd world.

Okay... so why would the President think such an obvious P.R. move were necessary? Perhaps it has something to do with the vast number of her peers who keep talking about "likability" and suggesting that the only reason more isn't getting done on Capitol Hill is that Obama doesn't treat legislators to enough lunches and dinners. (Parker can't pretend she hasn't noticed that phenomenon.) I expect that part of what the President hopes to accomplish is to get that particular faction of beltway pundits to stop droning on about invitations to dinner parties, and to start covering the facts.

Back to Parker's rhetorical question, "does anyone really suppose...", a few column inches away Ruth Marcus supplies an answer:

It is hard to imagine a breakthrough without intensive presidential involvement, which makes the new outreach so welcome. I know Republican senators, prospective members of Obama’s common-sense caucus, who have waited in vain over the past few years for a call from the White House chief of staff, never mind the president himself.

So there you go.

Government Gridlock - If You're Not Part of the Solution....

Ruth Marcus informs us,

The House and Senate are full of people who are better than the institutional constraints in which they operate. They chafe against the divisive imperatives of the permanent campaign. They yearn for the chance to strike a deal. For these lawmakers, and for the voters who claim to value compromise, reading this book would be a good start.

If they won't stand up and be counted - if they won't utter a peep about institutional issues (save for demagoguery about the failings of the other side) until they retire (and perhaps not even then) - their "good will" counts for nothing.

Edmund Burke died more than two centuries ago. It's not like it's a big secret, what will happen within an organization driven by self-interest when good men - in this context, men and women who have the power to do the right thing - do nothing.

When to Push....

Following test scores suggesting strong academic performance by Chinese students in Shanghai, I've read any number of protests, "Our nation would do just fine in comparison to other developed nations if we don't include the poor kids." And I read at least one study that suggested otherwise - that between our nation's relatively cavalier attitude toward academic achievement and our assumption that smart kids can take care of themselves, we are lagging at the high end of the curve. Having seen with my own eyes how easy it is for kids to get through high school with next to no math or science, and get through an undergraduate program with even less, how can we pretend otherwise?

I have followed some of the recent furor over a Wall Street Journal article on "Tiger parenting", published under the inflammatory headline, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior", along with the responses of various Chinese parents and children who took issue with the depiction of Chinese parenting and the explanation that the WSJ pulled out some sensational portions of the book without presenting the evolution of it's author's views and parenting style. In short, the WSJ article suggested that if you chain your child to a desk to do homework, freeze out pretty much anything that could distract your child from homework, demand top performance in everything the child attempts, and don't hesitate to use brutal derision if your child is less than perfect, "you're doing it wrong".

Ruth Marcus wrote a column attempting to give some balance to the issue, acknowledging that the WSJ article omitted some important context, but also describing a counter-voice, a recent book suggesting that parents not push their kids and be accepting of imperfect grades. We compare this:

"I would do it all again with some adjustments," Chua told Diane Rehm. She's still proud of having rejected the birthday cards. She relates what I think is the saddest story in the book - about how her late mother-in-law begged in vain for a single day with each granddaughter - with no apparent regret: "I never had a full day for them to spare. The girls barely had time as it was to do their homework, speak Chinese with their tutor, and practice their instruments."

with this:

"One of the ways teens learn about the importance of hard work is by suffering the consequences of their procrastination and laziness," Mogel writes. "A wise parent will resist interfering with those natural consequences, even if it means allowing a child to take a lower-than-wished-for grade."

Parental pushiness is a Mogel no-no. "Let affirmation - 'Yes, a B-plus!' - stand happily alone," she advises. Mogel cautions against the "What about varsity?" school of parenting, constantly prodding children to achieve the next level.

That suggests an inconsistency in Mogel's views - you don't cheer a B-plus that results from "procrastination and laziness". You would cheer a B-plus that results from a reasonable effort by the child. I haven't read Mogel's book, but I expect that she draws a distinction.

Marcus suggests that it is an exercise in caution to intervene too much in a child's life - that doing so carries less risk than intervening too little. On the whole, that seems correct, although it's not something we can measure objectively. If you ask two parents of very similar teens to draw a set of lines the child is not to cross, you might find some very different ideas. Given that odds are both teens "will turn out okay". Parenting isn't a scientific process, despite what your kid tells you there's unlikely to be a moment of parenting when you actually ruin her life, and we give ourselves credit than we deserve for how well our kids turn out. (Faults? Those are the kid's fault, or that "bad influence" friend, or maybe the other parent's....)

I agree with Marcus that some parental pushing is appropriate. I'll take her at her word that Mogel suggests not pushing at all. But... if you have high expectations for yourself, odds are you'll end up pushing your child without saying a word. I agree on the whole with Marcus on praise - it should not be lavished on underachievement. You don't lavish praise on a B+ from a child who could easily have scored an A. But you also shouldn't withhold praise "absent exceptional performance". At various times I've heard "experts" describe how and when to give praise to young children, elevating it to something of a pseudo-science. "Don't tell the child that she's 'good' or 'bad'. Praise or criticize the action, not the child." "Don't simply say, 'I like that painting you made,' identify what it is in the painting that you like."

But here's something interesting - self-esteem is negatively correlated to academic performance. You want your child to do well in school? Make sure she knows she's only as good as her grades. Make her terrified of coming home with a B+. Those kids pulling B's and C's or worse? Some of them are the happiest, most self-assured kids on the block. So yes, I can see how a certain style "Tiger Parenting" can help contribute to academic success, even as it's not a model I would personally follow and I'm skeptical of its long-term academic benefits. If the child wants an "A" because it makes him happy? Great. If the child wants an "A" to make you happy? Not as great. If the child wants an "A" because he's terrified of your reaction to anything less? Not a parenting style to which I aspire.

Our society has some difficult choices to make as we prepare for a future in which it appears that much of the so-called "working class", the nation's blue collar workers, can expect to earn at the lower middle class level, if that. We have to face the issue that not every person has the aptitude for or interest in college, and that we're doing our nation's colleges no favors by filling them up with kids who neither want to be there or lack interest in anything resembling academic rigor. We do even worse by ignoring the privilege that has helped people like Bill Gates (Lakeside School) or Mark Zuckerberg (Phillips Exeter Academy) succeed "despite being college drop-outs" - parental support for their interests, parents willing to pay for private tutors and elite schools to help their children achieve remarkable things within their areas of interest, and by the time they dropped out quite possibly a more complete education than is achieved by many graduates of lower and middle tier colleges. Sure, give everybody the opportunity for an education such that they can maximize their potential, but make sure that you're not doing so at the expense of identifying and fostering next generation of business and scientific innovators.

Push your child to do her best, and whatever your expectations or aspirations try to recognize that her best is good enough.

The Childish Nature of American Politics

My, how American loves leadership. The country loved George W. Bush when he "led" us into two completely unfunded wars, costing in the $trillions. The seniors loved George W. Bush for his "leadership" on Medicare, giving them another unfunded benefit projected to cost about 3/4 of another $trillion over the next decade. The nation, most notably the wealthiest 3% of the nation, is angry that G.W.'s unfunded tax cuts might not be extended - who cares about the unfunded $trillions lost to the tax cut, or that the cuts were scheduled by Bush to expire as part of the maneuverings to ram them through Congress without adequate funding or consideration of the future. That is leadership, American style, and the Republicans had his back.

Meanwhile, three items on our national budget prevent us from having any reasonable expectation of a balanced budget in the short- or longer term: Military spending, Medicare and Social Security. Bush, a self-described war president who had launched those two unfunded wars, was interested in increasing military spending. And he just got through making Medicare less sustainable, so he wasn't about to send the contradictory message that it was a pressing financial priority. So he picked the easiest of the three, and a long-term thorn in the side of the Republican Party, and announced a partial privatization plan for Social Security.

The question at this point is not whether Bush's plan was a good idea. It was poorly conceived - or, I suppose, well-conceived if you would have been among the money managers who received a government license to skim a percentage off of people's private accounts as "compensation" for your services. The question is not whether private accounts would have produced a greater return than treasury bonds. If you weren't already aware that it's foolish to believe that the stock market only goes up, the financial industry collapse and current recession should have set you straight. The question is, what price will the public pay for reform? What happened when the Grandpa Simpsons of the nation (that is, all of them except this one) got wind of the notion that somebody might be trying to cut their Social Security, the Republicans who had been so happy to push through Bush's $trillions in unfunded tax cuts and expenditures scurried for cover.

Some cynicism is appropriate here. Had Bush been serious about Social Security reform, in the sense of making the books balance for the indefinite future, he could have found enough Democrats to support reform. It's been done before - some minor tweaks to contributions, payouts, and the age at which you are eligible for partial or full benefits, and suddenly the program is projected to be sound for another century. Bush preferred to keep the system in a state of crisis, or more correctly something that could be misrepresented as a state of crisis, to make people believe that change must occur, and that it must occur quickly. Because it appears that about the only time you can get the public behind something that might involve even slight sacrifice is when you are dealing with imminent catastrophe. Bush's goal was not to fix the Social Security system, it was to undermine and privatize that system.

But what happened to any sense that you can lead a society toward an improved long-term outcome through some modest, short term shared sacrifice or adjustment, rather than waiting for that crisis? Absurd? Take a look at Ruth Marcus:

I write this from a perspective of sympathy with Obama's aims and overall support for his performance over the past two years. But Obama's dismissive analysis omits the non-emergency choices he made - primarily to press for and, in the end, muscle through the passage of health-care reform - and the ensuing discomfort of voters.

Discomfort that is entirely understandable, even to those of us who supported health-care reform.

Marcus speaks of how various Obama Administration ideas created "perceptions of intrusive government", but elides any mention of the intentional distortions that fueled those misperceptions. The health care reform plan that she sees as "too much" for the American people to take, of course, is similar to the Republican counter-proposal to the Clinton plan from twenty years ago, and is almost identical to the plan implemented for Massachusetts by once and future Republican Presidential contender Mitt Romney. "Cap and trade" was similarly a Republican idea, once championed by John McCain and supported in the tentative Democratic legislation by Lindsey Graham. The auto bailout started under the Bush Administration, and the larger financial industry bailout was also a continuation of Bush policies. By the time of the election, anybody paying attention was aware that the auto industry "takeover" had turned out to be a remarkable success.

So Marcus appears to be saying that as long as there are groups willing to play off of the public's fears and insecurities, even if it means portraying as frightening the very policies they once endorsed, and even if it means refusing to work for better solutions in order to obstruct reforms they concede are necessary, it's best to do nothing. The Obama Administration was not acting like G.W. on Social Security reform. It repeatedly reached out to and included Republicans in the drafting of its legislation, and to entice Republican support and contribution. It's possible that had the Republican Party been less interested in obstructionism, something they correctly anticipated would help them in the 2010 election, and more interested in forming good policy, we would have passed a better healthcare reform bill without the public misconception that this is a big government bill that's going to destroy health insurance as we know it.

If you look at the few Republicans who are willing to articulate a healthcare policy, you tend to see the Newt Gingrich brand of reform - eliminate comprehensive health insurance in favor of catastrophic coverage and health savings accounts. If you come down with cancer, you're covered. If you develop a chronic health condition, you had better either be born rich or keep your job because you're going to pay for that out of your "savings". What if your salary is to meager to allow for any appreciable contribution to your health savings account? Well, that would be your problem, wouldn't it. And do you know how we get to that system from the one we have? By forcing a crisis. The bad news for the Republican Party arising from the modest healthcare reform bill is that it forestalls catastrophe, and creates a framework through which an alternative to the Gingrich-style system can evolve without the current system first reaching the point of catastrophic failure. So yes, they ginned up hysterical opposition to a center-right reform bill and are screeching about repeal. But in the view of Ruth Marcus, all of that is President Obama's fault - it's too scary when the government tries to act in a grown-up manner and prevent things from reaching a crisis point.

Fareed Zakaria was on Real Time last week, and reminded Adrian Fenty that it's better to serve one term in office with real accomplishments than to serve multiple terms with little to show for it. Even though he's among the first to trumpet his own accomplishments, Fenty didn't seem comfortable with that idea. (What's the first thing a politician thinks of when he wakes up in the morning? How to get reelected.) But Zakaria's point is valid, and it's one I wish our political leaders were mature enough to internalize. It would also be helpful if our political press weren't so happy to cover the horse race instead of the issues and, after egging on the mud-slinging and "objectively" refusing to separate fact from fiction, weren't so quick to blame the politicians who try to show actual leadership, make tough decisions, and prevent crises for getting ahead of the American people.

The Increasingly Credible Anita Hill

Kathleen Parker shared a reproachable take on the controversy - a "Clarence Thomas may have lied - but what's the big deal?" Ruth Marcus sets her straight.

Healthcare Bipartisanship

Ruth Marcus offers a peculiar editorial today, urging the President to consider two "bipartisan" healthcare proposals. She defines "bipartisan" as "Supported by at least two members of Congress, at least one of whom is from each major party."

Now, don't get me wrong, if there's a good bipartisan solution it should be considered by the rest of Congress and the President. But by any sensible measure of bipartisanship, a bipartisan solution would be one that is likely to pass with the support of both parties. And there should be appreciable support. If you can't get a majority, you can still reasonably paint as bipartisan a solution that passes with only 30 - 40% support in the minority party. But it's a bit of a stretch when you're talking about a handful of defectors, even before considering that minority party members of a "Gang of 14" or equivalent are often motivated by factors quite apart from the best interest of their party and its supporters.

When you're talking about a proposal that seems to have the support of only one member of the opposition party, and perhaps no greater amount of support in the majority party? How is that bipartisan in any meaningful sense of the word?

Marcus also provides an odd explanation of why bipartisanship is necessary:

You may dispute the entire premise of this column - that bipartisanship is essential to this enterprise - and argue that Democrats, with firm control of both houses, should get everything they want.

My answer is that it's not so firm. The current standoff with Blue Dog Democrats suggests the need for some compromise, and the 60-vote Senate Democratic majority is far from monolithic.

It's hard to see the logic for the holes. First we have the straw man - if you don't think that bipartisan is essential to healthcare reform, you must want the Democrats to act unilaterally and get everything that they want. Nonsense. The majority party should not have to weaken healthcare reform, or any other reform, in the interest of drawing in the single Republican vote that would make people like Marcus sigh, "Ahhh... bipartisanship...." The goal should be putting together the best possible package that can pass.

Beyond that, if Ruth Marcus put Chuck Grassley and Robert Bennett, the two Republicans she identifies into a room with the instruction, "Don't come out until the two of you agree on a single healthcare reform bill," is there any reason to believe that they would come to agreement? Further, why does Marcus believe bipartisanship must come at a bill's inception? If the participation of one Republican is sufficient to render a bill "bipartisan", why wouldn't a Democratic reform bill be sufficiently "bipartisan" if at least one Republican supports the end product? And what if the principal goal of the Republican Party is that expressed by some of its members - to defeat healthcare reform in order to damage Obama's Presidency? If the goal of the minority party is to tear the wheels off of the cart, it makes little sense to ask them for design tips.

Further, while political parties can at times be disciplined and vote or act as blocs, it's perfectly normal for a political party in this country to include politicians with different views and ideas. Heck, put any two people in a room, no matter how closely ideologically aligned, and you're going to find points of disagreement. Does Marcus truly find it surprising that fissures and factions form when you bring together 256 politicians and tell them to come up with a major overhaul of the multi-trillion dollar healthcare system? That's inevitable, even before you consider possible external motivators (industry ties, campaign contributions, etc.).

Now if Marcus were arguing that the Democrats could overcome opposition to a perfectly reasonable healthcare reform bill, coming from a tiny faction of Blue Dogs, by bringing in enough Republicans to pass the bill - whether or not the views of those Republicans was representative of their party - that would be what the media used to applaud as "bipartisanship" when Bush was President. For some reason, Marcus no longer deems that sufficient. Why not?

The gist of Marcus's argument appears to be that bipartisan solutions are always better and thus, even if a solution must be weakened or broken in order to get bipartisan support, that support should be obtained. I wonder if she would propose that the National Council of Churches resolve its theological disputes by granting veto power to Richard Dawkins.

If You Don't Like the AIG Bonuses.... You're Part of an Angry Mob!

I may have to stop reading the news for a day or two.

Ruth Marcus believes she has an insight here:

Could we put down the pitchforks for just a moment and have a reasonable discussion about the bonuses at American International Group?

I get the outrage. It's galling to pay $165 million to a bunch of wealthy traders to clean up a mess that they, or at least their company, made.

I get the political fix in which President Obama finds himself. The sums are staggering - if not to Wall Street, then to everyone else who's ever worked for a living. The public is worked up, increasingly convinced that its money is being flung around recklessly, to a gang of extortionists at AIG and at European banks, without any hint that the fundamental problem is being fixed.

Yes, obviously, these bonuses are inspiring rage disproportionate to their amount, which I've already observed is miniscule compared to the bailout. (CWD likes to remind me of the quip, "$10 million here, $10 million there, pretty soon we're talking about real money." If only we were talking in figures that "small".) But Marcus conveniently forgets how much the taxpayer has had to swallow. If this were the first scandal over outrageous bonuses, well, we can roll with it. If it were the second, well, we can't just let the system collapse, right? But at a certain point we, the taxpayers, have every right to say "enough". Contrary to Marcus's suggestion I think, if anything, U.S. taxpayers have been very patient and understanding.

But Marcus continues to chide anybody, even the President, who questions the wisdom of these bonuses. She thinks they're justified:

Well, because in the short run, hammering the AIG employees to give back their bonuses risks costing the government more than honoring the contracts would. The worst malefactors at AIG are gone. The new top management isn't taking bonuses. Those in the bonus pool are making sums that for most of us would be astronomical but that are significantly less than what they used to make. Driving away the very people who understand how to fix this complicated mess may make everyone else feel better, but it isn't particularly cost-effective.

This combines two contentions about the bonuses that I have previously seen presented in isolation, and to my surprise Marcus manages to somehow reconcile them - at least in her own mind:

• The people who put these deals together are the only ones who can undo them; so we have no choice but to pay them ridiculous amounts of money so that they'll stay and clean up their mess; and

• All the bad people are gone and have been replaced with good people, who shouldn't be punished for the fact that the people they replaced did bad things.

Obviously, if it was possible to replace all of the bad people in the space of a few months such that only good people remain, and those good people are competent to fix the problems created by the bad people, it can't be that difficult to find new, quality employees who can understand and fix the mess.

Beyond that, her justifications make no sense.

• These people used to earn more before their peers brought down the economy? Well, cry my a river. So did a lot of people who aren't getting six figure salaries and seven figure bonuses.

• New top management isn't taking bonuses? Then we're to assume that they're no good and are incompetent to fix the problems, because nobody qualified would take those jobs without huge bonuses?

• Taking back the bonuses will cost the government more than paying them? Care to explain how?

In the longer term, having the government void existing contracts, directly or indirectly, as with the suggestions of a punitive tax on such bonuses, will make enterprises less likely to enter into arrangements with the government - even when that is in the national interest. This is similarly counterproductive.

No wait, really. You're telling us that AIG wouldn't have agreed to be bailed out if it considered there to be a possibility that the government might try to reign in salaries? Even if we pretend they had a choice, didn't you just get through telling us that the new senior management voluntarily gave up bonuses? You think that was because they had no clue that the government would be concerned about excessive compensation? More to the point, where's your outrage about Ford and G.M. being instructed to shred their union contracts?

Marcus repeats some of the nonsense I've addressed in prior posts - for example, these bonuses were negotiated a year ago, before AIG received government money (but no question, let alone an answer, on whether these bonuses were negotiated, and enshrined in these extraordinarily bulletproof contracts, in anticipation of a government bailout. And that these bonuses have been common knowledge for over a year - she had best remind Geithner of that, because he begs to differ. And of course, this carries on into the "sanctity of contracts" nonsense argued even less persuasively by Sorkin.

Like Sorkin, Marcus also attempts to dance around her hypocrisy on the sanctity of contracts:

But, you ask, what about autoworkers who are being squeezed to renegotiate their contracts? Those renegotiations mostly involve the future terms of employment, though, it is true, they also could affect retiree health benefits. If an autoworker doesn't want to show up on the assembly line under the terms of a new deal, he or she doesn't have to. That's different from telling AIG employees they're not getting the amount on which they agreed for work they've already performed.

Horse puckey. If I negotiate a three year contract at a specific wage, and you tell me half-way through the contract that we're shredding it but "that's okay because it only affects my future wages," do I really need to explain to you that the wage structure of the entire contract was premised upon its three year term? Even if I ignore such things as earned retiree benefits, that Marcus dismisses as a footnote?

Further, this isn't compensation for work performed. That's called a "salary" This is a "bonus" - money paid in addition to salary. Typically, bonuses might be paid for this thing called "performance" - but no performance was required for these bonuses. These bonuses have been described as "retention bonuses" - payment to keep people in their jobs at AIG when they might otherwise quit. Except then, why are millions of dollars being paid to employees who have already left AIG? Marcus would tell us that the wage provisions of the UAW contracts can be renegotiated, but not the bonus provisions in those UAW contracts - aren't those "different", as well? What would it take to make Marcus cry "Shenanigans"?

Marcus continues by distinguishing this from bankruptcy - you know, where companies are in the same situation but taxpayers don't bail them out and pay their employees' salaries and bonuses, and the employees end up on the street:

This is more analogous, but bankruptcy is a legal mechanism designed precisely for the abrogation of contracts. It is intellectually consistent to support expanding the power of bankruptcy courts to rewrite mortgages on primary homes - as they can with vacation property - but balk at reneging on the AIG contracts.

Great. Now we're getting somewhere. Okay, Ms. Marcus, let's hear it - explain your intellectual consistency: Why it's okay for this very type of contract to go unpaid when a company goes bankrupt, but not when the only thing that keeps it out of bankruptcy is a taxpayer bailout, unprecedented in size?

Oh... You say you ran out of space before you could do that? How... unfortunate.

Once the pitchforks are out, it's awfully hard to convince the mob to put them down.

Don't worry, you're a Washington Post columnist and, at least so far, the angry mob hasn't turned on the village idiots.

If Martians Landed On The Earth, Would Obama Given Them Human Rights?

Here's how a conversation might go between a columnist and the Obama campaign:

Q. I have a question about Obama's health care policies?

A. Did you review the materials on our website?

Q. Of course. But I was hoping for a few more specifics on when the candidate might impose a mandate....

But the act of picking up the phone and dialing a number? It's too much for our poor columnists and their overstressed dialing fingers? Which is why we get this type of stuff from Ruth Marcus:

To read Obama's exams is to get a glimpse of the supple intelligence he would bring to the presidency and to be impressed by his lawyerly capacity - perhaps even compulsion - to see the other side's argument and mine the weaknesses of his own case.

But it is also a reminder of Obama's essential elusiveness, and how little we understand about how the candidate himself would resolve these thorny problems....

Reading them buttressed my confidence in Obama's capacity to grasp the nuances of any question, no matter how complex. They also underscored my sense that, in the hardest cases, I'm not always sure where Professor Obama, or President Obama for that matter, comes down.

I dunno. Maybe it's just me, but if I were a Washington Post columnist and thought one of his exam questions was that pressing, I would call him up and ask him about it. Would that make for too short a column?

Anti-Obama Duplicity In The Washington Post

When I saw this unsigned editorial last night, my thoughts were, "It's no surprise that the author lacked the courage to attach his name to it," and "I'm tired, so I'll wait for others to reply to it." So far I've come across a post in Tapped taking on the Post's characterization of Obama's positions as "eccentric"

One wonders what word the Post will use to categorize McCain's policy when someone asks him whether he'll stick by his pledge to leave when Iraqi leaders request it. Peculiar?

and a TPM Election Central post taking on the Post's claim that Iraqi officials don't support Obama's plan. But I think a response should also be made to this claim:

Other Iraqi leaders were more directly critical. As Mr. Obama acknowledged, Sunni leaders in Anbar province told him that American troops are essential to maintaining the peace among Iraq's rival sects and said they were worried about a rapid drawdown.

Right now, the U.S. is maintaining the status quo in Iraq. The Sunni factions would like to regain control of the entire nation. They surely have some justifiable fear that if the U.S. pulls out, they might become subject to treatment similar to what they dished out to Shiite factions under G.H.W.B.'s watch after the first Iraq War, or given the short end of the stick on oil revenues. But the reality is, one of the reasons there is so little meaningful progress on political reconciliation is that right now the Sunni factions don't have to negotiate. They can stonewall, and fall back on U.S. protection. A drawdown, rapid or otherwise, could force them into a political compromise that gives them far less than what they want. But maintaining the status quo gets us no closer to any sort of compromise.

Also in the Post, Ruth Marcus lets us know that, in a military conflict and post-conflict occupation, the "reward of careful perseverance may become visible only in the long arc of history", something that of course can be said about any armed conflict. Unfortunately, it does not inexorably follow that continuing an occupation will inevitably make things better, nor does it inexorably follow that the costs (financial and otherwise) of continuing an occupation will outweigh the possible long-term benefits. (And we face those great unknowns even if we hand out lots and lots of candy to Iraqi children.)

Grasping A Bad Analogy

Ruth Marcus (sort of ) defends John Yoo, contending that his arguments in favor of torture and expansive executive power were amateurish and wrong, but that it would somehow be 'dangerous' if he were subjected to any professional consequence.

Yet the message sent to students by dumping Yoo would be even worse: that some opinions are too dangerous to express. Lawyers are used to staking a foothold on slippery slopes, but this one, with academic freedom at issue, is too treacherous to risk.

I would find that argument more compelling had Yoo made public pronouncements on torture. The controversy is over a confidential memo, something that the Bush Administration and probably Yoo himself would have preferred to have never entered the public realm. But on to the analogy:

The most useful analogy I've read on this subject comes from Princeton professor Deborah Pearlstein, who asked what Berkeley would do if a molecular biology professor "had written a medical opinion while in government employ disclaiming the truth of evolution," and continued to dispute the theory of evolution once he resumed teaching.

That's suggesting that Yoo's sole offense is bad scholarship. And you know what? I don't think that professors should be shielded from scrutiny, or from possible loss of position, if they engage in bad scholarship. Fundamentally, what good is a professor who is unable to grasp the subject matter of his supposed area of expertise? The better argument, attempted on the Volokh Conspiracy, is premised upon a defense of the scholarship.