Romney's Tax Returns?

The Following Songs Go Out To....

To Mitt Romney, for his courageous leadership on women's rights:

To Paul Ryan, for his dedication to volunteer work:

Obama & Biden - They'll Clean Your Clock

Mitt Romney: "Government Does Not Create Jobs"

But wait a second, Governor Romney, you claimed that you were going to create 12 million jobs if elected President. Your so-called five-point plan. Now you say "Government does not create jobs"?

Well, your jobs plan - your statement that you will create 12 million jobs - was always pretty obviously a fraud, it's good of you to finally admit it.

Show Us The Numbers, Mr. Romney

Another night of the usual obfuscation from Mr. Romney on his budget plan. But this time he insists, he's looked at the numbers. He's done the math. He's a financial supergenius - he understands this stuff.

Okay, Mr. Romney: Put our money where your mouth is. Show us your budget. Your complete plan, your detailed numbers.

What are you waiting for? After all, sitting on the numbers makes you look like a liar.

If You're Going to Fake Manual Labor... Fake it Right

Thinking back to Good Will Hunting, there's a scene in which Matt Damon is supposedly mopping a floor. He does so by sloshing a huge amount of water onto the floor them moving it around with the mop. You can't blame the actor. Who would have expected Matt Damon to have janitorial experience, after all. But you would think somebody associated with the shooting of that scene would know how to mop a floor, and I find it difficult to believe that a "technical adviser" would have been difficult to find.

Ah, but that was a long time ago. What brings the memory to mind? Paul Ryan's latest bad acting job:

Paul Ryan claims to have spent "a summer washing dishes", using a Hobart dishwasher. Apparently the dishwasher didn't even once break down, lucky for him, or the patrons of the restaurant would have been put at risk. Why do I say that? Because Paul Ryan doesn't know how to wash dishes - even clean ones.

Ryan is presumably referring us back to the summer he spent as a teenager working at a McDonalds Restaurant. That restaurant would have had a three-compartment sink, just like the one in Ryan's staged photo op, just in case the Hobart broke down. And if he was in fact the dishwasher, Ryan should have been trained how to use that sink.

The proper method of washing dishes is not: "Pretend to wash a clean dish, rinse thoroughly and pass it to a small child." Instead you use all three compartments of the sink - the first is for your hot soapy water, the second for clean water for rinsing, the third for your sanitizing solution. You wash, then rinse, then sanitize. Pretty simple, right?

It's a shame that Ryan didn't show up when there were people to feed or dishes to wash. He might have learned something. Instead, oh my, what a lesson he was giving to his children.

Update: Ryan's team is now claiming that the dishes Ryan washed were in fact dirty. Ryan's defenders contend that this means that the photo op was not "faked" - a claim that, under the facts, is unworthy of response. But here's the thing: If the dishes were dirty, it's all the more important that they be cleaned properly. The person who left the dirty dishes for Ryan should either have ensured that Ryan knew how to wash dishes, or should have stayed there to instruct him because what Ryan did on camera was and remains a health code violation.

David Brooks, Master Craftsman of Republican Talking Points

Okay... it's really not worth my time to dissent a column this risible, but... today, David Brooks gives a lecture on bipartisanship that, true to his standard, consists of his spin on the latest Republican talking points, recast to appear measured and moderate to those who might be... normally I might say, average to less-informed voters, today I'll say, people who aren't very good at thinking. How many sharks can you jump in a single column?

Brooks starts with a Richard Dawson impression. Survey says.... "viewers loved Mitt Romney’s talk of professionalism and bipartisanship." No need to argue why that is or what it actually means.

In other words, primary campaigns are won by the candidate who can most convincingly champion the party’s agenda, but general election campaigns are won by the candidate who can most plausibly fix the political system.

As any Tea Party member can tell you, there is a difference between "bipartisanship" and what it might take to "plausibly fix the political system". Brooks also knows as a matter of policy, reaching a bipartisan solution can weaken a policy proposal. That's not always the case, but by definition a bipartisan solution is going to be less partisan than, if I need to say it, a partisan solution. If you're looking for purity of ideology, you want partisanship.

Brooks then goes through a Romney-like list of elements he deems essential to "break[ing] through the partisan dysfunction and mak[ing] Washington work". Let's start with what it doesn't take:

1. It "doesn’t take moderation". Brooks points to Ted Kennedy, whom he argues "had the ability to craft large and effective compromises on issues ranging from immigration to education and health care."

   That of course explains why Ted Kennedy won the nomination to be the Democratic Party's candidate back in 1980, sailed into the White House and... oh, right.

   Well then, it explains why David Brooks and the Republicans view Kennedy as a pillar of bipartisanship, a figure they respect and admire, and regard the culmination of his career of work in favor of healthcare reform, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as what you can achieve through a true bipartisan effort. Oh... right.

   Well, Ted Kennedy did cosponsor the DREAM Act, and that sailed through the... oh, right, the Republicans changed their mind.

   Recall, Ted Kennedy is not only Brooks' best example in support of his point, Kennedy is his only example. I'm not going to dispute that over the course of a very long career Kennedy cosponsored some important legislation with Republicans, but anyone with knowledge of history knows that much of that cooperation occurred during a prior era when the parties were less polarized, when the Republicans didn't see obstructionism as a winning election strategy, and worked in contexts in which the Republican cosponsors saw an opportunity to benefit from attaching their names to the bill. John McCain didn't drop his support for the DREAM Act because Kennedy became less persuasive. He dropped it because he was afraid of losing his seat to a primary challenger.

2. Might doesn't "make right". Brooks lectures that the effective President has to avoid thinking that his position is objectively the correct one, and that he can "win the debate" and get everything he wants simply by "get[ting] the facts out there". Brooks somehow forgets to tell us where "out there" is, or what any of this has to do with passing legislation.

   Were Brooks honest about it, he would admit that he's not talking about what it takes to pass legislation, but what it takes to defend legislation that is not popular. If the opposition party is lying about the legislation and its effects, can you count on convincing people of the truth merely bu putting "the facts out there"? Obviously not.

   As you work through his column, it becomes increasingly clear that Brooks is making little effort at internal consistency. He's instead alluding to right-wing criticisms of President Obama.

3. Don't live in a fantasy world - "distant fantasies almost never come true", so it's better to work for incremental change. What Brooks actually means here is that a President who has the opportunity to pass legislation that Brooks opposes should instead pass something modest, perhaps inconsequential, in the name of "partisanship". Never mind that the actual fantasy would be believing that, after another election, somebody like Mitch McConnell will change his stripes, apologize for setting a legislative agenda around defeating you, and suddenly become a partner for progress.

Of course by now you're wondering, what does it take to be the bipartisan savior - the "governing craftsman" for whom Brooks so hungers.

1. Having a "dual consciousness" - "[T]he governing craftsman has to... distinguish between a campaign consciousness and a governing consciousness." Campaigning involves "simplifying your own positions, exaggerating your opponent’s weaknesses and magnifying the differences between your relative positions", while governing involves doing "the reverse of all these things".

   Needless to say, Brooks offers zero examples to back this claim up.

   Let me give you an example for how presenting complicated positions, attempting to bridge the differences between yourself and the opposing party, and taking up their opposition works in practice. A President might take, say, a health care reform idea that has its roots in the Republican Party and right-wing 'think tanks', and has even been adopted in one state by a Republican governor, attempt to tweak and update it so it will work on a national basis, and repeatedly attempt to reach across the aisle for bipartisan support. Sound effective?

   Now let's consider what "the opposite" looks like. The sort of approach Brooks would surely tell us would be a one-way ticket out of Washington. The opposition leader might sniff that his number one job is to defeat you, not work with you. The opposition might engage in demagoguery about the plan, asserting that it is socialism, a government take-over of health care, that bureaucrats will decide the care that you get, that it will have death panels that can deny you life-saving care.

   Thank goodness we live in a political culture in which "governing consciousness" rules the day, because one would hate to think what might happen a president or opposition leader couldn't get past his "campaign consciousness". The horror.

2. "Being able to count".

   Is Brooks trying to rule out Mitt Romney at this point, based on budget numbers that don't add up? No, Brooks is pointing ot the obvious fact that if a President wants legislation to pass he must gather enough votes in the House and Senate to get it to pass.

3. Being able to "distinguish between existential issues and business issues." Brooks evokes that famous American politician, Winston Churchill, and contents that "Churchill would have made a terrible mistake if he had compromised with the appeasers". That assertion is going to make little sense to a casual reader, but immediately evokes the right-wing tropes against President Obama - Mitt Rommey's demagoguery and his persistent lies about an "apology tour". Brooks, a good Republican to his very core, is articulating a set of rules for others, specifically Democrats, not for himself.

   Brooks has one other example he offers in support of his point, "On the other hand, Dan Rostenkowski and Robert Packwood were absolutely right to compromise to get the tax reform of 1986 passed." Let's see... so far his examples of politicians who live up to his deals are the late Ted Kennedy, the late Winston Churchill, the late Dan Rostenkowski, and the long-politically dead Robert Packwood. As I said, he's describing what happened in an era during which the parties were less polarized, and pretending it carries over into a significantly different era.

   Assuming Brooks is aware that Winston Churchill would be ineligible to run for President, which of the two additional names he's mentioned does he imagine would have been the "craftsman" politician who would have been elected to the presidency in a walk and presided over a golden era of bipartisanship?

   Brooks feigns child-like innocence, that "in the middle of the fight almost every issue will feel like an existential issue, though, in reality, 98 percent of legislative conflicts are business issues". Perhaps Brooks is describing his own confusion, because although I can see plenty of examples of the opposition party turning "business issues" into stumbling blocks - preventing appointments from going through, needlessly obstructing the progress of legislation that it will ultimately support, spreading misinformation about what should be relatively non-controversial passages in new or pending legislation, and the like.
   
   I'm not coming up with an example of a president confusing business issues with existential issues. It's fair to observe, though, neither does Brooks - we know he's attacking President Obama through innuendo, but Brooks knows how foolish he would look if he came right out and made that claim.

4. Brooks offers the brilliant insight, that his bipartisan leader must be "able to read a calendar". Brooks explains that the politician must understand that they cannot postpone their agenda until after the next election in order to act - that it's "usually better to make a small step next month than do nothing in hopes of a total victory next generation".

   Let's imagine then, that the President is facing a large deficit and national debt, and that people are urging a so-called "grand bargain" that will supposedly balance the budget for decades to come. "Never mind the fact that this Congress cannot bind future sessions of Congress", those maximalists might argue, "You can't take seriously any budget proposal that doesn't fix everything for decades - or longer!"

   The David Brooks who wrote the current column might lecture those politicians and peers that they are being absurd, not only due to the fact that the next session of Congress might undo the work, but because it's not a realistic outcome to expect. He might argue, "If you calm down and take a look at the President's tax plan, you'll find that it does a lot to accomplish your stated goals. This isn't an existential issue - it's business. It's what can pass through Congress, right now. Think of it as a first step down a long road."

   But the David Brooks we have come to know and love? He wants none of that incremental stuff.

   Obama would be wiser to champion a Grand Bargain strategy. Use the Congressional deficit supercommittee to embrace the sort of new social contract we’ve been circling around for the past few years: simpler taxes, reformed entitlements, more money for human capital, growth and innovation.

   So guzzle that Kool-Aid and shoot for the moon! But... what if the public resists?

   Don’t just whisper Grand Bargain in back rooms with John Boehner. Make it explicit. Take it to the country. Lower the ideological atmosphere and get everybody thinking concretely about the real choices facing the nation.

   Doesn't that translate into the big "no-no" of thinking, "all I have to do is get the facts out there, win the debate and then I’ll get everything I want."? No, you see, this is completely different - all you have to do is get the facts out there, win the debate, and then David Brooks will get everything he wants. No rules or principles should get in the way of that.

5. Be "socially promiscuous." Brooks argues that a good deal maker will have lots of friends, be constantly glad handing the opposition, "celebrate their anniversaries and birthdays". You know, the sort of thing that helped Clinton have such a smooth, carefree relationship with the opposition party during his presidency.

   Were Brooks an honest man, he would admit that he's merely parroting an Republican talking point that the President does horrible things like... eating dinner with his family when he could be out at cocktail parties glad handing Republicans and lobbyists. Never mind that, by a number of accounts, Mitt Romney is no social butterfly, and came to be detested by pretty much every one of his primary opponents in two consecutive primary seasons. Never mind that many Republicans openly hated him right up to the second they were stuck with him.

6. Be a really good liar, and conspire against your base. Seriously. Brooks lectures,

   It is relatively easy to cut a deal with the leader of the other party. It is really hard to sell that deal to the rigid people in your own party. Therefore, the craftsman has to enter into a conspiracy with the other party’s leader in order to manipulate the party bases. The leaders have to invent stories so that each base thinks it has won.

   On the little issues - the "business issues" - that's relatively simple, politics as usual. A bit of spin, the issues not that important, you make a deal. How in the world, though, does Brooks believe that will work in relation to solving big issues. Might it sound like President Obama, at a debate, telling the public that he and Mitt Romney aren't very far apart on how to fix Social Security? If so, what are the odds that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are going to get out of the way and allow the passage of a modest reform bill that will fix Social Security's balance sheet for the next 50 - 75 years?

7. Next, you have to compromise in advance - show "substance pragmatism". Your base wants Medicare for all? A public option alongside private health plans? The insurance industry and healthcare industry want to be sure that the reform will not affect their bottom line profits? Insurance companies want to ensure that they will stay in business, perhaps even become more profitable, despite changes that will otherwise reduce their bottom line? A "craftsman" President might do what President Obama did - work with the various industries and their lobbyists to overcome their opposition to any reform, build the reform on the platform of a right-wing, Republican-endorsed system of private insurance, a mandate to purchase insurance, and keeping the reformed system as market-based as possible. He might get a true craftsman like Ted Kennedy to strongly endorse the bill and its passage.

   No, of course that's all wrong. Stop arguing based upon those facts with their icky "liberal bias" - Brooks' column is about advancing Republican spin. What an honest Brooks might describe as the outcome of his "conspiracy with the other party's" leadership to "manipulate the party bases" and "invent stories." Because that's what pundits do when they are approached for help by a "governing craftsman".

Brooks knows he's being dishonest when he argues that voters are demanding "craftsmanship" in advance of the "brutal trade-offs that loom ahead". Were he an honest man, he would note that Romney's new "talk of professionalism and bipartisanship" is belied by his own campaign trail rhetoric and that, rather than addressing any of the "brutal trade-offs" that Brooks sees as inevitable Romney is promising the Sun, moon and stars - tax cuts for everyone, a huge increase in military spending, pain free spending cuts (trust him, even though he only states support for cutting PBS and the unpopular parts of Obamacare), and that he'll cure the nation's woes by magic - why, if people simply believe he's going to be elected, flowers will burst forth from the ground, the stock market will reach uncharted heights... yeah.

Brooks also cannot be so obtuse as to believe that "Voters [were] astonishingly clear. In 2000, they elected George W. Bush after he promised to change the tone in Washington". If Brooks checks his history books, he'll find that if you look at the popular vote the 2000 election was won by Al Gore. Last I checked, losing the popular vote was an "astonishingly clear" message that more people wanted your opponent to win than wanted you to win, even if you carry the electoral vote. Similarly, Brooks might realize that more was going on in 2008 than the Republican's self-proclaimed maverick, campaigning on a claimed record of "reaching across the aisle," lost to a candidate who merely "promised to move the country beyond stale partisan debates". The country I was in was suffering from a profound economic crisis, and McCain's response was not perceived as impressive. Where was Brooks?

Brooks would have done better to have written a column about how politicians will try to sell you snake oil while on the campaign trail, but alas, that would have ended up being a column in support of the wrong party.

How Mitt Romney Will Cut Taxes for the Rich Without Technically Lying

E.J. Dionne restates the conventional wisdom on Romney's stated tax policy, but makes a good catch:

During the same nomination battle, Romney abruptly changed his tax policy to placate the supply-side-Wall-Street-Journal-Grover-Norquist axis in the GOP. Romney’s initial tax proposal was relatively modest. The right wasn’t happy. No problem, said Romney, and out came his new tax plan that included a 20 percent cut in income tax rates, “rate cuts” being a term of near-religious significance to supply-siders.

Romney pointedly asserted (again, in the primaries) that he wanted the tax cut to go to everyone, “including the top 1 percent.” But this doesn’t sell to swing voters now, especially after the leaked video in which Romney wrote off 47 percent of Americans as incorrigibly dependent. So in the first debate, Romney tried to pretend that he didn’t want to cut rich people’s taxes. He reassured us that “I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.” (By the way, he could cut taxes for the rich a lot and still keep their “share” of the government’s overall tax take the same.)

Here's what Romney said:

Well, sure. I'd like to clear up the record and go through it piece by piece. First of all, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don't have a tax cut of a scale that you're talking about. My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I'm not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high- income people. High-income people are doing just fine in this economy. They'll do fine whether you're president or I am.

There is a difference - a huge difference - between reducing the "amount" and reducing the "share". If I pay $80 in taxes and you pay $20 in taxes, I'm paying 80% and you're paying 20%. If a politician says he's going to reduce the amount of your taxes but not mine, the meaning is pretty obvious - your taxes go down, mine stay the same. A 20% tax cut would leave me paying $80, but you would pay $0.

But the word, again, is "share".

Back to that 20% cut: If both of our tax rates were reduced by 20%, I would pay $64 an you would pay $16. And guess what? My share of the taxes would still be 80% despite a massive reduction in the amount I paid.

Ah, you say, but how do you square that analysis with the following:

And finally, with regards to that tax cut, look, I'm not looking to cut massive taxes and to reduce the — the revenues going to the government. My — my number one principle is there'll be no tax cut that adds to the deficit.

How can that work if you issue a significant tax cut?


If Romney does nothing, the deficit is going to drop by hundreds of billions of dollars as we emerge from the recession. Let's say the deficit were projected to drop next year to $600 billion. You cut taxes by $400 billion and the deficit goes right back up to $1 trillion. But wait - didn't you just increase the deficit? No! You reduced the deficit from $1.1 trillion to $1 trillion. Sure, it might have otherwise be smaller, but you can say with a straight face (or psychopathic smirk), "I told you the truth. There was no tax cut that adds to the deficit."¹

But you object, "The deficit isn't going to drop that quickly." To which I respond, "Taxes will be decreased in phases." Romney's been playing games with spreadsheets for most of his adult life. This is just another game, but with a far less sophisticated audience than he dealt with at Bain.
---------------
Similarly, Romney's stated "jobs plan" is to lean back in his chair, watch the economy grow - natural growth over the course of the next four years is projected to add 12 million jobs, even if the President does nothing - and call it a "plan".

How the Media Plays Out its Role in Our Risible Economic Debate

After a couple of opening paragraphs of pure snark, the Washington Post's editorial board criticizes the President for failing to clearly articulate why he is running for a second term. I've previously called for the President to do exactly that, but unlike the Post's editorial board I'm not going feign outrage if the President sets different priorities than I would prefer.

After attempting to trivialize the President's stated second term agenda by pointing to his plan to help states hire more math and science teachers, and his proposal to end certain tax subsidies for the energy industry,

He wants to take away $4 billion in tax breaks from oil companies. (The deficit in the fiscal year that just ended was $1.1 trillion.)

Why am I reminded of Robert Samuelson's notion of what constitutes "pocket change". Have we truly entered an era in which $4 billion in waste is not worthy of consideration, and in which a proposal for its elimination is mocked? If your concern truly is to balance the budget, why not respond, "One $4 billion item of waste down, 224 to go"? If you read the Post you know the answer - that's not the type of government expenditure that concerns its editorial board.

From there the Post gets to the meat of the President's tax proposal,

And he wants to increase tax rates for the wealthy. That would put a serious dent in the deficit, but it wouldn’t solve the fiscal problem, which unaddressed will “lead to a level of federal debt that would be unsustainable from both a budgetary and an economic perspective,” the Congressional Budget Office recently said.

First the problem is the deficit, and cutting waste isn't enough. Next it's, "The President has a clearly stated proposal that will cut the deficit" but, after a bit of sleight of hand, the deficit is no longer the issue.

So now that we're no longer talking about deficits, but are talking about the "level of federal debt", what does the Post have to say?

A solution can come only from restraining spending, especially growth in Medicare and Medicaid, and raising revenue, and not just from the rich.

Let's back up for a moment. The leading reasons we have a significant deficit at the moment are the Bush tax cuts, the Bush Administration's unfunded wars, and the economic downturn. As I recall, the Post supported all of the above. Yes, we would have a substantial deficit right now even without those factors, but principally attributable to revenue reduction from a profound recession and spending measures meant to help us pull out of the recession and to soften its blow on families. The point being, as we pull out of the recession and return to more normal levels of employment, more people will have income and tax revenues will rise.

And yet, when it comes to figuring out how to raise more revenue, creating more jobs, reducing unemployment, reinvigorating a middle class and improving its wages, none of that occurs to the Post's editorial board. It's "Why aren't you cutting entitlements." It's not that they're unaware that growing the economy will raise tax money - it's that they aren't being candid about their own agenda. If the Post's editorial board has a proposal by which tax revenues can be raised without impairing the economy, above and beyond as a result of growth or the proposed modest rollback of the Bush tax cuts, it's high time they shared it. After all, they found the time to chide Mitt Romney for not sharing the details of his secret plan to make revenue neutral his proposed massive tax cuts, so why keep their own secret plan so close to the vest?

You have to love this part. Remember how "A solution can come only from restraining spending... and raising revenue, and not just from the rich"? Seriously, this is the next sentence of the editorial:

Yet Mr. Obama has put forward no plan to curtail entitlement costs, while Mr. Romney at least is willing to say that benefits for wealthy Medicare recipients will have to be cut back.

That is, immediately after acknowledging that the President proposed a tax increase that will significantly reduce the deficit, and poo-pooing that it's not enough because it isn't sufficiently broad-based, they're praising Romney for making an economically meaningless pledge about trimming Medicare benefits for the wealthy. Even if he keeps that promise, the revenue savings will be trivial. So why is it bad for the President to take a serious, effective measure to close the deficit, but laudatory for Romney to make a cynical, hollow gesture? The most obvious inference is that the Post's concern is not with deficits but is instead with entitlements.

The editorial board next returns to its prior snarkiness,

Why the reticence? Maybe, after promising so explicitly four years ago that he would make hard choices and refrain from kicking the can down the road, he’s reluctant to make the same promises again. Maybe the usual Democratic “Mediscare” campaign is so useful he does not want to muddy the waters — or, more accurately, un-muddy them — with budgetary honesty.

You would think that at least one member of the editorial board would remember the Affordable Care Act, including its serious effort to find cost savings in Medicare. You would think that they would remember that the Republicans immediatedly engaged in demagoguery about the ACA, screaming at the top of their lungs about "death panels" and "cuts to the Medicare benefits you paid for." They claim to have watched the debates, so it's difficult to believe that they could have missed the demagoguery from Romney and Ryan about "cuts" to Medicare. Which side is engaged in budgetary dishonesty and is resorting in "Medicare" tactics, again?

Funny, also, how the Post is suddenly unconcerned about Social Security. Which candidate explicitly addressed Social Security and what it would take to make it fiscally sound over the long term? If you need the reminder, it was President Obama. Does the editorial board have the grace our courtesy to say, "At least he has promises to fix this other thing we've been harping about?" Nope. As with discussion of the ACA, any such honesty would undermine the two points they are trying to make, that the President has made no proposals to prevent entitlement costs from spiraling out of control, and that the only possible solution is massive cuts in those programs.

It seems fair at this juncture to ask, how does the editorial board believe that the federal government can cut Medicaid spending? We're not talking in that context about a population with a lot of resources to spare. To the contrary, if you have significant resources you don't qualify for Medicaid. If you cut Medicaid you cut the provision of medical care to that population.

You can, of course, use ACA-type measures to try to identify waste, to evaluate which treatments are the most cost-effective. But in case they missed it, the Supreme Court recently ruled that Medicaid is such a large program, contributing so much money to state coffers, that states must be given the right to opt out of any significantly revised program and be allowed to continue with the status quo. Seriously, does the Post have even one idea it can share? Romney at least came up with PBS and Sesame Street - and the repeal of the cost-saving measures for Medicare that the board wants to pretend Obama didn't sign into law.

As for Medicare, even if they assume Romney is sincere, they know that savings from his proposal to trim benefits for the wealthy would be trivial. They know that his pledge to repeal Obamacare will increase the cost of the program. They know that a promise to do something a decade from now, even if it's something they would applaud (i.e., turning Medicare into a voucher program) is nothing more that irresponsible buck-passing. Within that context, they want the President to promise additional cuts to Medicare - above and beyond the cuts that Romney and Ryan are suggesting will devastate seniors' ability to obtain care?

The Post is right about this: It would be nice if we could have an adult discussion about these issues and how we might mitigate, if not solve them. If the editorial board spent any appreciable amount of time reflecting on the subject, though, they would realize that unless they break with their longstanding tradition they aren't part of that solution. They're not even making an effort.

Why a Coward's Path to Medicare Reform Won't Work

I've made no secret of what I think of policy proposals that are not slated to take effect until after an election or, worse, after the next President is in office. Granted, sometimes the timing issues are a bit more complicated than they might appear at first blush. The "Bush tax cuts" were scheduled to expire after ten years not because Bush wouldn't have preferred to make them permanent, but because they were passed through reconciliation and thus had a ten year shelf life. Obamacare was implemented in phases not because there was concern about earlier implementation, at least on the part of the Democrats, but because of insistence that the bill be revenue neutral. The staged implementation allowed the financial projections to show revenue neutrality over a ten year period. Which is not to say that I don't think that the Obama Administration felt some relief when the least popular aspect of the plan was pushed to 2014, a happy side-effect of the bitter pill.

In stark contrast are policy proposals over issues that a President fears would be damaging. George W. Bush promised that his policies would lead to an independent Palestinian state during his second term because he didn't want to fall flat on his face trying to force a resolution before his reelection, taking advantage of any suckers who supported his reelection based upon his feigned interest in the issue then all-but-dropping it after his reelection.

The more difficult issues of our time, it seems, are placed on the coward's schedule. The ultimate cowards of our current election cycle are Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who are deliberately creating a conflict between generations in order to try to grease their way into the White House. They have made clear that they want to turn Medicare into a voucher program and would prefer to do so immediately, but they don't have the courage to stand behind those convictions.

Instead they claim that they will pass legislation that will take effect a decade from now, long after their assumed second term ends, that will leave untouched the Medicare benefits of anybody over the age of 55 but will give any younger person a voucher inadequate to pay for equivalent coverage - and with the voucher structured to lose value over time in relation to the projected future cost of health insurance. They pretend that they will make up some of the shortfall by reducing the value of the voucher for wealthier seniors, but know full well that the amount they could save through such a measure would be a relative pittance.

You know what else? Other than the fact that health insurance companies don't care to insure seniors, with their unpredictable and often high medical costs as well as end-of-life care, their present proposal sounds an awful lot like "Obamacare for seniors, with a public option." Funny how they're not worried about "individual mandates", public competition with private insurers, and the like when it's their proposal. That's not really a big surprise, though, given that Romney still supports Romneycare - his real objections to "Obamacare" are that (a) objecting could help him defeat a Democratic president and (b) it might work.

Back to the coward's time line. As anybody who knows anything about how our system of government works can tell you, Congress passes spending measures on a year-by-year basis. Congress meets and passes new legislation each year. If this year's Congress passes a law that attempts to bind future congresses, a future congress is free to change or repeal that law.

Why do Romney and Ryan quiver in their boots at suggesting to today's older voters, those age 55 and older, as well as current Medicare recipients that their benefits should be transformed to a voucher program? Simply put, those voters have more money and influence as compared to most other voter blocs, they like and want Medicare, and they vote. Romney and Ryan are happy to try to scare those voters with demagoguery about bureaucrats deciding what care they will get, or budget cuts that don't directly affect benefits and which they, themselves, have endorsed. But when it comes to telling that population, "Medicare costs the nation too much, you paid for it but not enough as compared to what you're getting, and it's only fair that you share the burden of our reform," nope, not happening. They propose continuing what they claim to be an undeserved windfall to today's seniors, while imposing what they claim to be an unreasonable burden on everybody else.

So let's move nine years into the future. Assuming Romney and Ryan win the election, they'll be out of office. And their Medicare reform? It won't yet be in effect. The voters they're presently terrified of confronting will be 65 and older. And an entirely new population of voters will be between the ages of 55 and 65, and the new generation of politician will be every bit as terrified of those voters as Ryan and Romney are right this very minute.

It appears to be the hope of Romney and Ryan that, when confronted with that anger, rather than repudiating the never-implemented Medicare reform, politicians a decade from now will look at the budget picture and say, "Let's just put this voucher thing into effect for everybody." More likely, they'll either say, "Let's put this off another ten years." Faced with enough voter anger, as the deadline becomes real and the weakness of the replacement benefit becomes obvious, they'll say "Oh well, I guess we won't be implementing that plan after all."

Either way, the most likely impact of the cowardly reform schedule is that rather than making tough choices, politicians of the next decade (for most of which Romney and Ryan hope to be leading the pack) will slough off the idea that they need to do any hard work to fix Medicare for the long term because, "Several years from now our reform will come into effect and the markets will magically fix all of this stuff." That is, Romney and Ryan are giving themselves an excuse to do nothing constructive and to show no leadership on the actual issues facing Medicare, knowing full well that their cowardice on the issue could create immense difficulty for the administrations that succeed them.

Perhaps they hope that their fiscal policies will leave the government in such bad shape that it cannot afford to perpetuate Medicare. But if that's the case, they should admit up front that they are offering a recipe to harm and weaken our nation, not one that will give it an strong economic footing. If, on the other hand, they believe their budget plans will improve the nation's finances, what are the odds that their successors are going to take the heat for decisions Romney and Ryan were too cowardly to implement when, just like Romney and Ryan, they can push the issue off onto a future administration.

You Won't End Racism With Shallow Bromides

How would you describe the following statements:

• The way to stop deficit spending is to stop deficit spending.

• The way to stop the civil war in Syria is to stop the civil war in Syria.

• The way to stop overfishing in the ocean is to stop overfishing in the ocean.

• The way to stop climate change is to stop climate change.

• The way to stop our nation's dependency on foreign oil is to stop our nation's dependency on foreign oil.

Are any of those observations helpful? Useful? Insightful? Or are they banal? Circular? worthless? Mindless repetition unworthy of the label, "tautology"? How about this one:

• The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

I was reminded of that statement, made by Justice Roberts in opposition to the continuation of affirmative action, when Will Cain recited the line on Real Time as if it were a magic bullet solution to our nation's history of racial strife. (They way to stop talking heads from saying foolish things on television is to....)

Jim Lindgren provided a brief, albeit incorrect history of that assertion here, in a statement that I believe crystallizes the thinking of people like Roberts and Cain,

As general background on the history of the nondiscrimination ideal, the best place to start is Andrew Kull's prize-winning The Color-Blind Constitution (Harvard Press). Kull details the rejection of the color-blind version of the 14th Amendment in favor of what was viewed at the time as the weaker and less radical version that was adopted. And he details the rejection of color-blindness, just a few years after a consensus was finally reached in 1964 that American law was to be color-blind. His last main chapter describes the shift away from color-blindness toward what Justice Brennan called "benign racial sorting." In the course of that chapter he describes the idea that the special contribution of American law to reducing discrimination might be to embrace nondiscrimination.

There was nothing in the "less color-blind" version of the 14th Amendment that became the law of our land that compelled our nation to adopt legalized segregation, a doctrine of "separate but equal" that was anything but equal, anti-miscegenation laws, Jim Crow laws and the exclusion of minorities from certain jobs and educational opportunities based upon the color of their skin. There is nothing "color blind" in a body of law that explicitly divides the population based upon skin color and excludes one set of people from superior services available to the other. There is nothing "color blind" in declaring that formalized inequality to be permissible equality. You would have to be blind to history to not recognize "separate but equal" as a sham.

Lindgren is correct that the notion of the "color blind constitution" was rejected as we entered the civil rights era. What he fails to accurately describe is that the notion that the constitution should be "color blind" came in the wake of the civil rights movement, and that the argument was championed by people who had opposed the end of segregation. Why would advocates of segregation and Jim Crow call for a "color blind" constitution? Because they wanted to tie the government's hands in its implementation of remedies. It is that history that lives on in the remarks of Justice Roberts - not explicitly, but in the form of an echo. Roberts can reflexively issue a platitude, and the heirs to the Southern Strategy reflexively cheer, never mind the history.

Lindgren notes,

The idea that the best way to end discrimination is to stop discriminating was a common idea by at least the Reagan Administration.

And quotes Bill Bennett, then Secretary of Education,

What steps do you think should be taken to eradicate racial prejudice and discrimination? What steps should be taken, I guess, are the ones I laid out in my letter to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. That is, we should stop discriminating on the basis of race, sex, religion, and origin. Stop, stop, stop. That's where everybody wants to go. The best way to get there is to get there--that is, to stop. You do not eradicate an unfortunate legacy by perpetrating another unfortunate legacy.

You known, "Shucks, what an awful history, but it would be terrible to impose remedial measures." Case closed, we now return you to your original programming, "Welfare queens and young bucks who buy T-bone steaks with food stamps."

Admittedly, affirmative action has always worked better in theory than in practice. The name is born of the theory - the concept of the government taking affirmative action to end racism. But what action can the government take to even the playing field. To overcome generational disadvantage. The conceit of Justice Roberts is that the nation can be viewed as a single actor - and thus, that if the government becomes truly color blind, everybody will be truly color blind. Discrimination will end and we'll all wear Benneton and sing songs about Coca Cola.

But the world is not that simple, and the government was trying to act to prevent and correct a history of private discrimination through public measures. That's inevitably going to be unfair to some people, and is inevitably going to provide a benefit to some who don't need it while denying the same benefit to others who do. There are plenty of valid criticisms that can be made of affirmative action programs, both in terms of the big picture and in terms of the details. The issue being, and the Supreme Court historically recognizing, that sometimes a deeply flawed corrective measure is better than doing nothing. And certainly that you don't eliminate racism by pretending it no longer exists.

I've commented on this before, but one of the recurring themes over at the Volokh Conspiracy, the group blog where Lindgren posts, is that affirmative action is harful to minorities. That they would be more likely to excel at school, t graduate, to earn high incomes if they went to lesser schools better matched to their assumed academic talents. But they never present that same argument about legacy admissions, nor do they apply the same reasoning to kids who are at the margins of admissions standards and get bumped down to their second choice school based as a result of affirmative action. Why would a Harvard legacy be harmed if his school said, "You don't meet our academic standards?" Why would an applicant to any school be harmed if they received the "benefit" of being denied admission to a more difficult school for which they were barely qualfied, and instead ended up in a less academically rigorous setting where they would be closer to average? The reasoning should be the same, but obviously the politics are different.

Ending affirmative action won't end racial discrimination any more than its creation started discrimination. The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to come up with effective mechanisms that will stop people from discriminating on the basis of race, and then to implement those solutions. If you believe racism no longer exists, then great - the last step is to eliminate race-based corrective measures. But if you know better and care about ending racism, while it's fine to say "Affirmative action is deeply flawed and we can do better," you need to at least try to define the programs you would implement in its stead or attempt to explain why you see the cure as being as bad as or worse than the disease. If you don't care, however, Roberts' quote makes for a great sound bite, doesn't it.

Working With The Other Party is Only "Bipartisanship" When You Have a Choice

Jamelle Bouie takes a look at one of the themes of the Romney campaign, that he has "proved" himself capable of working in a bipartisan manner because he was a Republican governor working with a Democratically controlled legislature. While Bouie explores the fundamental dishonesty of using this theme to attack President Obama, there's something else that we should note:

It's not "bipartisan" to work with the other party when you have no choice. When a Democratic legislative majority passes a bill, the Republican governor who signs it cannot claim that in doing so he is "reaching across the aisle". The compromise of the governor's agenda is inevitable. The same is true when party control is flipped - Jennifer Granholm doesn't have a proud history of bipartisan accomplishment, but instead struggled for eight years to push back against a Republican-controlled legislature. It's what the people voted for, but I would not argue that the result was good for the state, nor would I accept a Romney-type argument that Granholm proved her ability to reach across the aisle merely by showing up for work and signing bills that were invariably passed by Republican majorities, no matter how many state Democrats also signed on.

It's difficult to address these issues without inviting a glib response, "You're right, I had to work with the other party, and I did, successfully, time and time again." But when you cannot pass a single piece of legislation without the support of a large number of legislatures from the other party, that is simply not evidence of how you would work in a polarized environment, where your party shares or holds control of the legislature.

The Burdens of Debt

Dean Baker shared a thought-provoking post on the nation's debt, challenging conventional wisdom:

A moment's reflection shows why the debt is not a measure of inter-generational equity. At some point everyone alive today will be dead. At that point, the bonds that comprise the debt will be held entirely by our children or grandchildren. The debt will be an asset for the members of future generations that hold these bonds. This can raise distributional issues within a generation. For example, if Bill Gates' grandchildren own the entire U.S. debt there will be important within generation distributional consequences, however this says nothing about inter-generational distribution.

I agree with Baker that, right now, the government can borrow money at virtually no interest. Arguably an effective negative interest rate when inflation is taken into account. Were it possible to discuss debt in rational terms, Mitt Romney would talk about the strategy his company used to lard up acquired businesses with debt, supposedly forcing them to become more efficient but also enabling his firm to extract its massive fees and profits on its transactions.

Does Romney believe debt is always bad? Far from it, his personal history indicates that he is very concerned about household debt, but sees business debt as an entirely different animal. If he wants to run government "like a business", at least any business he's actually run, he would be declaring it foolish to not be grabbing up as much of that free money as we can stuff into our pockets.

Romney complains about and deliberately overstates the nation's debt to China, because it's a poll-tested, fear-based argument that works with his base. However, if he knows anything about trade, he knows that we run massive trade deficits each and every year, and that the trade deficit must be paid for with either public or private debt. If China is willing to give us free money to cover the difference, in essence paying us to buy its exports, does businessman Romney truly see that as a bad thing?

My problem with Baker's argument is not that I think that the money disappears, it's that I seem to place a higher value than he does on the "distributional issues" raised by servicing debt. That is, the more debt the nation holds, the more money it must raise from future taxpayers to service that debt. The balance sheet will say that the same amount taxpayers spend to service the debt is received by the holders of the debt, but if my personal experience holds I'll be the one writing that check not the one receiving the payment. Also, there's a tipping point at which the cost of servicing the debt becomes disproportionate, consuming revenue that is needed for other government activity, necessitating either cuts or additional borrowing.

I am more sympathetic to Baker's argument that the present deficits are largely a product of the recession, that there's no evidence that government borrowing is interfering with private borrowing, and that government imposes costs on people (often to the great joy of businesses) in many ways other than through deficit spending. I'm sympathetic to the argument that recessions are the times when you should worry less about deficits, and that the boom times are when we should be balancing the books. I'm convinced, both by logic and by the many failed austerity programs in Europe, of the argument that if they can be avoided a recession is not the time for austerity measures. I'm sympathetic to borrowing money to pay for the infrastructure we need to help our economy grow and flourish. At the same time I'm not able to disregard the "distributional consequences" for future generations. I might feel different if it were going to be my grandchildren who were receiving the payments as opposed to the ones making them but, alas, it won't be.

Promising the Moon then Passing the Hard Work to Congress Isn't Leadership

A central theme of the Romney/Ryan campaign is that they don't have to be specific about the more difficult aspects of their otherwise pie-in-the-sky plans because they're simply going to delegate the task to Congress.

"Here's our specific proposal for a $4 - $5 trillion tax cut, inuring largely to the benefit of the wealthy. Now it's your job, Congress, to find the loopholes to close and deductions to eliminate to make our plan revenue-neutral.

I have forgotten. Which branch of government controls the purse strings again? Which branch of government is infamous for its pork and earmarks, for not wanting to cut anything that might alienate a constituent or wealthy donor? Which branch of government has two-faced "budget experts" who publicly decry stimulus spending while privately pleading for stimulus dollars to be sent to their districts? Which branch of government delegates its difficult budgetary tasks to committees and forces "up or down" votes on committee reports, because that allows its members to avoid taking personal responsibility for any resulting pain? (Give me a "C", give me an "O", give me a "N"....)

This would be the same Congress that created those deductions and loopholes? This would be the same Congress that passed, with "budget expert" Paul Ryan's support, authorization for two unfunded wars and the massive unfunded entitlement expansion, Medicare Part D? This would be the same Congress that has passed each and every budget that has added to our national debt? When he's not campaigning, and professing deep regret for his career of deficit-expanding votes, Paul Ryan is very much part of the problem.

If Romney and Ryan believe what they're saying, they're fools. But you know what? They're not fools. They're hoping that the rest of us are fools, and that a pliant media continues to go along with their game.

To be leaders in this context, Romney and Ryan don't have to take a "my way or the highway" approach. They simply need to put together a credible proposal and say, "If Congress can improve on this, that would be great, but as you can see this really can work." You know what else? If they're deferring to Congress, with Paul Ryan being the GOP's "budget expert" in Congress, Ryan should be able to speak for the House majority right now. If this proposal were to come before the Republican majority in the house, what would Ryan endorse right now? It's a fair question, and one a leader would not be afraid to answer.

Were they honest, they would admit that they're not willing to risk their political futures by telling the truth - that even if we assume there are enough loopholes and deductions to close, there is simply no way that Congress is going to take responsibility for inflicting that kind of pain. If they were courageous they would stand behind their convictions and state exactly what their plan entails, accepting the political consequences. Were they leaders they would produce an actual plan and present it to Congress and the nation. But alas, they're none of the above, so they pretend that its enough to pass the buck to Congress, knowing full well that Congress will demur.

When a Politician Talks About Reproductive Choice

If a politician is directly asked whether, in the event of his election, people should be worried about the loss of reproductive choice, and he answers anything but "no", whatever else he may appear to be saying his answer is "yes".

Whether you find that disturbing or reassuring is an entirely separate issue.

Will Paul Ryan's Budgetary Lies Haunt Romney

They will, if the media does its job. The media should hold Romney's feet to the fire until he identifies enough loopholes and deductions he will ask Congress to close to make his "budget" work.

Ryan was repeatedly challenged to identify the tax deductions he and Romney propose to eliminate to "pay for" their massive tax cut. Predictably, Ryan refused to identify a single one. Even when asked if he would protect the mortgage interest deduction for households earning less than $100,000, he refused to answer.

Here's the thing: There's no way on God's green Earth that Romney and Ryan are the know-nothings they pretend to be on this subject. They're cowards, not idiots. They have specific deductions in mind - probably not enough to make their proposal work, but they do have ideas. They won't name them - beyond some lame demagoguery about Obamacare (which is projected to decrease the deficit) and PBS (whose federal funding is less than a rounding error) - because they're afraid that specifics will cause their bad arithmetic to turn them into budgetary laughing stocks, that their proposed cuts will prove so unpopular that candor costs them the election, or more likely both.

It was fascinating to hear Ryan complaining that the CBO wasn't able to score a speech by President Obama, because they had neither been asked to score anything nor given data to score, and because the speech itself was short of specifics. You know what? To the extent that a politician is making a budget or spending proposal I agree with Ryan that the specifics should be shared, and I agree that when those specifics are produced the CBO should score them. Where I don't agree with Ryan is that the rule should only apply to Democrats. Man up, Mr. Ryan, and submit your latest, detailed budget proposal to the CBO for scoring.

You have to appreciate the audacity, presenting a caricature of Obama's tax proposals then whining that taxes on the wealthy won't be sufficient to close the deficit (as if anybody claimed they were), and in almost the next breath pretending that you can pay for Medicare at its present levels by trimming benefits for the wealthy. You know what? When you target the wealthy it's either class warfare or it isn't, and you promise on top of that "class warfare" to fix the most significant budgetary problem we face, projected Medicare costs, by reducing benefits for wealthy people you are engaging in the very act you misattribute to the other side - because as you've already admitted, the dollars aren't there.

And to keep resorting to the tired distortion about the "$716 billion cut" to Medicare that Ryan included in his own budget, pretending that in Democratic hands a cut he explicitly endorsed through that adoption will devastate seniors? Talk about chutzpah.

Ryan kept complaining that accurate descriptions of his proposals would scare people, suggesting that it was wrong to scare voters. Clever, really, and I expect some people will actually fall for it.

The Latest News from Planet Douthat

When it comes to politics and political commentary the "fools or frauds" question often arises. When somebody makes an assertion that reflects badly on their intelligence, you have to wonder are they truly that foolish or are they knowingly advancing a fraudulent argument. Some columnists appear to believe that "fool or fraud" is a false dichotomy, far too constraining - you don't have to be one or the other when you can be both? And then, alas, you at times see somebody who is attempting a fraud so clumsily that he reveals himself to be a fool.

For some reason my thoughts now shift to Ross Douthat. Douthat opens by assuming that last week's debate was between "the flaws in contemporary conservatism" and "the weaknesses in Obama-era liberalism", and suggests that flawed contemporary conservatism carried the day. I am wondering at this point if Douthat watched the same debate I saw, but alas, he offers no analysis to support his conclusion. We then move into fantasy land:

Four years ago, the Obama presidency was hailed as the beginning of an extended liberal renaissance – a new New Deal, a resurrected Camelot, a return to the glory days of Lyndon Johnson before Vietnam wrecked his presidency. Health care reform was the highest priority, but it was only supposed to be the beginning.

The glory days of Lyndon Johnson.... wasn't that the Obama team's tag line going into the election? Seriously, other than a handful of first time voters already exhausted by eight years of Bush ineptitude, few of whom would get the "Johnson/Vietnam" reference, who does Douthat imagine he is describing?

The most common reaction I was hearing from Democrats was, "I hope the Democrats in Congress don't **** this up." A close second place went to, "I wonder how the Democrats in Congress are going to **** this up?" Perhaps Douthat is confused and believes that Democrats live in opposite land, and if he and his circle of confederates were crying about how Obama was going to ruin the world it could only mean that Democrats believed the opposite. It appears that he needs a bit more grounding in what the Bush Administration deemed "the reality based community."

He goes from there to worse:

With the Democrats enjoying huge congressional majorities, everything seemed to be on the table: Immigration reform, a program to combat climate change, card-check legislation, a wave of trust-busting in the banking sector – and at the least, the very least, a return to Clinton-era tax rates.

Immigration reform. You know, that ridiculous "liberal" concept that George W. Bush wanted to make part of his first term agenda, and that "liberals" like John "DREAM Act" McCain used to champion.

A program to combat climate change. You know, like the cap and trade approach that John McCain guy used to advance, in the past also endorsed by that other ridiculous, naive liberal, Newt Gingrich.

Advocacy for "a wave of trust-busting in the banking sector"? Earth to Planet Douthat? Where did he get the idea that President Obama supported whatever he imagines "trust-busting in the banking sector" to mean? Perhaps Douthat has President Obama confused with Teddy Roosevelt? In the real world, Obama was praising Jamie Dimon while letting Larry Summers and Tim Geithner spearhead financial industry reforms.

A "return to Clinton-era tax rates"? Republicans continue to feign concern about deficit spending and the need for lower deficits and balanced budgets, so it would not be unreasonable for Obama to allow the "Bush-era tax cuts" to expire. I am sure Douthat has erased the facts from his memory, but the cuts passed through reconciliation and were scheduled to expire after ten years. But I digress. No member of the Democratic Party advocated "", and in fact taxes were cut. There is talk about "a return to Clinton-era tax rates" for the wealthiest wage earners, but that's entirely different from what Douthat is pretending to have been Democratic Party policy.

Card check legislation? Well, obviously the modern Republican Party isn't going to help labor unions, so at least he is correct in terms of associating it with the Democratic Party, but it was not the priority Douthat would have us believe. Why pull it out of mothballs? Because it remains a Republican talking point.

In other words, Douthat complains that the Democrats wanted to pass a "weak" form of "liberalism" which, for the most part, had previously been at the core of campaign rhetoric and policy proposals of the prior President and Obama's 2008 election opponent. Well, yes, adopting Republican policies can reasonably be described as a weak form of liberalism, but that's obviously not what Douthat meant.

And... whoah... we're only too paragraphs into Douthat's foolishness.

Douthat pontificates,

Sometimes Obama-era liberalism has disappointed because it has failed outright. The defeat of cap-and-trade legislation and the stillborn push for immigration reform exposed the deep fissures within the Democratic party, and particularly the divide between the enlightened do-goodism of the party’s upper middle class supporters and the economic interests of its remaining blue-collar constituents.

It should be unnecessary to say this, but McCain/Gingrich style "cap and trade" measures, and McCain/Bush-style immigration reform aren't the best examples of "Obama-era liberalism" or its failure. Immigration reform failed because of right-wing demagoguery, a strategy of xenophobia that remains remarkably effective at scaring and dividing people. John McCain could have demonstrated some backbone and picked up at least one of his old causes, rallying the tiny number of Republican votes it would have taken to see his dreams (no pun intended) become reality. But no, politics were more important, and as Mitch McConnell said, their number one job was to beat Obama in 2012.

How about that little sneer at the Democratic Party's elites who are out of touch with "the economic interests of its remaining blue-collar constituents"? Because, you know, 95% of Democrats are rich, urb9o0anites, doing something other than working in the financial industry but, you know, otherwise that rich and out of touch. Were Douthat an honest man, he would admit that he's using a euphemism here for "working class white males who have not attended college", but... he's not. Even if we assume that there remains no lingering effect of the Republican Southern Strategy, which we should not, the Republican Party has engaged in shameless demagoguery on a wide variety of issues to keep that group of voters largely in its corner. And yes, it reached the point where John McCain had to scamper away from his own long-held beliefs in support of policies that Douthat purports to be "Obama-era liberalism".

Douthat next launches into the standard Republican double message on Obama's first year in office - having just told us how the President should have been able to resolve pretty much every major, unresolved issue facing the country, we get "but he simultaneously should also have tried to do less".

Then came the White House’s failure to sell the public on its health care bill, which exacerbated the stimulus’s underperformance – by leading to months of wrangling when Washington should have been reckoning with the economy instead – and then cost the Democrats dearly at the polls in 2010.

You see, there was no issue with Republican obstructionism and demagoguery, the whole "death panels" thing never happened, Republicans didn't (and don't) criticize the President for supposedly cutting Social Security (to give money to undeserving people who haven't "paid for" Medicare), and the like. No, all the President had to do was give speech and the nation would have magically understood the entire bill. You have to ask, why didn't he think of that. Oh yeah, because he doesn't have the good fortune of living on Planet Douthat.

This failure of salesmanship doesn’t in and of itself discredit the bill’s provisions.

That's an interesting admission, Ross. Funny how you didn't have enough space in your blog post (which does not have any limitations on its length) to better explain that one.

But at the very least it demonstrates that the redistributive policies liberals favor will only be accepted if they’re founded on a secure base of economic growth – growth that Obama’s policies, unlike F.D.R.’s or L.B.J.’s, have conspicuously failed to produce.

And just like that, we're beamed back up to Planet Douthat. The planet where seniors won't take a penny of Social Security or Medicare unless they're sure they paid for everything they receive (and more!) over their working lives. The planet in which Medicare Part D, a gargantuan, unfunded expansion of Medicare wasn't spearheaded by a Republican President, passed by a Republican Congress, and eagerly accepted by a panoply of senior citizens who vote Republican. With Paul "Mr. Fiscal Responsibility" Ryan himself voting for the expansion. Because... redistribution. Ew.

Not being big on internal consistency, Douthat explains the biggest fault of "Obama-era liberalism" - it's designed to advance the ends of powerful interest and industry groups, instead of the people.

More broadly, all of Obama’s signature accomplishments have tended to have the same weakness in common: They have been weighed down by interest-group payoffs and compromised by concessions to powerful insiders, from big pharma (which stands to profit handsomely from the health care bill) to the biggest banks (which were mostly protected by the Dodd-Frank financial reform).

One wonders how Douthat defines "conservatism", or if he has ever heard either the expression, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" or "business as usual". He can't possibly be that clueless about how Washington works.

A small dose of reality: The legislation the President passed could have been made significantly better had a handful of responsible Republicans signed on. The President would have been able to avoid making unseemly deals with the likes of Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson, the nation would have been better served, the special interests might have been pushed back at least a few inches. But no, Mitch McConnnell was focused on creating a context for Obama's defeat, and it makes for much better demagoguery to whine about "The Louisiana Purchase" than to admit that one responsible Republican could have voted in favor of the bill and obviated the need for that deal.

It may have been an empty rhetorical gesture, but the fact that Romney could actually out-populist the president on “too big to fail” during the last debate speaks to the Obama-era tendency for liberalism to blur into a kind of corporatism, in which big government intertwines with big business rather than restraining it.

The President was, of course, handicapped by the facts. Romney can do his usual, embracing both sides of the issue: "I love Dodd-Frank, except for the parts that I hate and will repeal, and no I'm not going to tell you what parts I'm taking about," and pretend that he would do more than the President to take on the financial industry. May have been an empty rhetorical gesture? Once again, "Earth to Planet Douthat...." The financial sector is openly seething about what they see as an attack by the President. Bailing them out so that they could pay their bonuses with taxpayer dollars and borrow for next to nothing, and get right back to business as usual? You can only imagine their horror. You can rest assured that Romney is presenting a very different message behind closed doors. Those are, after all, his people.

And hm... what word is it that anti-Obama demagogues like to use to describe Obama, and what does it have to do with "big government intertwine[d] with big business"? (Something that Douthat has apparently never noticed before. Seriously?) Perhaps he's been hanging out with Jonah Goldberg. Yeah, Obama's that brand of socialist-communist-fascist that is always ignoring the needs of the people in favor of serving powerful industries.

How can you follow up on such a wonderful analysis? How about by... lying?

But what we don’t see in this campaign cycle is much soul-searching from Democrats about the ways in which their agenda hasn’t worked out as planned.

Instead, in a country facing a continued unemployment crisis and a looming deficit crunch, liberals have rallied behind a White House whose only real jobs program is “stay the course” and whose plan to deal with long-term deficits relies on the woefully insufficient promise to tax the 1 percent.

You know, job bill? Blocked by Republicans? Because they want Obama to lose? Apparently no similar effort was made on Planet Douthat? You can criticize it on substance - Matt Taibbi thinks it's a handout to Wall Street, Richard Epstein thinks it would create a socialist nightmare - but you cannot pretend it does not exist. What does Mitt Romney promise to do, again? Oh, that's right... "create" the exact number of jobs that are projected to be created if we vote a turnip into the White House.

It’s not that Romney offered some detailed, brilliantly persuasive alternative. He didn’t, and couldn’t, because his party has at best a sketch of a policy agenda rather than a blueprint.

Actually, as Douthat knows, if Romney's party thought Romney believed half of what he said in the debate they would pull the plug on his campaign. The same interests that Douthat whines are too influential in the Obama Administration consider Romney to be bought and paid for.

But Romney isn’t running for re-election, and this was a case where merely seeming forward-looking, energetic and reassuring was enough to remind Americans of all the ways that the Obama era has disappointed them – and in so doing, sent shivers down liberalism’s glass jaw.

Wow. For mixed metaphors of that caliber I usually have to read Thomas Friedman.

Frankly, if a Republican presidential nominee can win an election by serving up a steaming dose of Rafalca leavings, but doing so in a "forward-looking, energetic and reassuring" manner, we have bigger problems than trying to figure out how to make glass jaws stop shivering. Douthat may come to realize that, should he ever move back to Planet Earth.

Should Douthat venture beyond his peer group and into the world at large, he will find that Democrats are very concerned about what might happen in a second Obama term. That they're aware of the institution impediments politicians like McConnell are happy to utilize to damage the President, even when he knows he's also harming the country, because power is more important than policy. But I suspect I"m now getting into stuff that's beyond Douthat's ability to grasp, harder and nowhere near as much fun to write as a blog post that echoe's Republican talking points, and not at all likely to fill Douthat's pockets through speaker fees and book contracts.

Update: Ethan Gach is far more charitable to Douthat than I. Responding to Douthat's claim that "liberals" have "rallied" behind the President and his lukewarm second term agenda, Gach comments, "What makes Douthat’s chiding so unbearable isn’t that it’s untrue: it’s that it completely misses the point."

When Douthat complains, "we don’t see in this campaign cycle is much soul-searching from Democrats about it seems that he missed his own political party's inability to "soul search" following various election losses. But more than that, he's presenting a hollow man argument. In his bifurcation of society, Douthat whines about "liberals" as if there's a single, unified "liberal" mindset, and that "liberals" are all cheering for the President. He can only believe that if... he never ventures outside and limits his media exposure to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. It would be more true to accuse conservatives of mindlessly cheering for Mitt Romney despite his offering what Douthat charitably describes as "at best a sketch of a policy agenda rather than a blueprint". Seriously - Douthat defends that on the ground that Romney is not the incumbent, but it's much easier to run on a fantasy when your campaign is not firmly grounded in facts on the ground.

Gach believes that Douthat is expressing a clever form of contrarianism, that "The very thing that liberals love to accuse Romney of being, well, it’s actually true of their guy". Except the concern about Romney is not that "his agenda going forward is insubstantive" - the concern about Romney is that he has an agenda that he refuses to disclose, but that he may nonetheless be elected.

Gach continues his charity work,

I can understand why Douthat doesn’t want to look at the entire context in which the people, philosophies, and political parties he’s discussing are operating. That would be difficult, complex, and inconclusive. It certainly would not lend itself to the kind of “actually THIS is what’s going on” blogging that professional pundits are expected and encouraged to turn out.

If you say, though, that Douthat "doesn’t want to look at the entire context" you have the choice of stating that his blindness is not willful (fool) or that he's deliberately omitting the context in order to present an argument he knows to be deeply flawed if not false (fraud). Yes, if you can see through the charade this approach "makes what he says kind of silly", but his pontifications weren't intended for somebody like Gach who can see through the charade.

Confusing Science with Magic

Arthur C. Clarke once observed that any sufficiently advanced technology can seem indistinguishable from magic. Many TV shows and situation comedies have presented time travel, where present technology appears magical to an earlier population, or even where a technologically sophisticated alien presents herself as a god. It's a fair observation.

At the same time, it can be easy to lose track of how we perceive the development of technology, particularly if we lack a sufficient understanding of the science underlying the technology. Watch an episode of the original Battlestar Galactica series and much of the technology seems antiquated - voice recognition software putting your dictation on a low resolution CRT? How about the communicators from the original Star Trek series? Why don't they upgrade to iPhones? And a separate tricorder? Why isn't there an app for that?

Quite a few years back I was involved in a discussion about food shortages and distribution issues, regional overpopulation and the like. Somebody who was reasonably well-educated popped in with the comment that she didn't worry about food shortages because it was only a matter of time before we had food replicators, as seen on Star Trek, the Next Generation. If Jean-Luc Picard could turn to a hole in the wall, say "Earl Grey, hot", and have a cup full of tea magically appear, clearly it is only a matter of time before we all have such a wondrous device creating and serving our favorite foods in unlimited quantity, right?

Well, wrong. I pointed out the physics involved - development of the device aside, the extraordinary amount of energy it would take to replicate food in that manner. My comment fell on deaf ears. "Scientists will figure it out."

There's nothing new in that attitude. Charlatans have, for centuries, promised that they can find ways (figuratively or literally) to turn common items into gold. Even in this age of modern pharmaceuticals, we're always hoping for a magic pill or potion that will allow us to live forever, to overcome the effects of inactivity, overeating, aging. We are primed to hope, and there will always be somebody looking to capitalize on that fact.

On Real Time this past weekend, Bill Maher criticized a Member of Congress, John Shimkus, for making the insipid suggestion that we don't need to worry about climate change, because God had promised Noah that he would never again destroy the Earth with a flood. Never mind that the promise wasn't, "I'll stop you from destroying the Earth."

One of Maher's guests, Will Cain, expressed skepticism that climate change was as serious as some suggest. He employed the traditional had waving defense of many climate change deniers, pretending that there's a meaningful disagreement among climate scientists about the reality of climate change. He then launched into what I expect he believes to be a discussion of science, reciting that the world had been predicted to run out of food but that the development of fertilizers proved that theory wrong.

In other words, "Don't worry about the facts. Don't worry about what science can actually do. Because, magic."

When religious people respond to criticism of faith-based argument by asserting that a lot of argument that is supposedly based on science is in fact based on faith, they can point to Will Cain as their poster child.

It was not scientifically wrong to look at the world's capacity for food production and, based upon the amount of food an average individual requires to survive, projecting a maximum carrying capacity for the planet. Although the development of nitrogen-based fertilizers did significantly increase the planet's capacity for food production, it remains possible to do exactly the same thing: to calculate the Earth's carrying capacity based upon current levels of food production. It's also possible to examine how regional or global shortages will change that number.

Beyond confusing science with magic, and adding a generous topping of faith and self-centeredness - never mind where science hasn't worked out so well for past or present populations, if Will Cain needs science to fix something it will deliver and it will do so in a timely manner - Cain demonstrates confused thinking.

The fact that the world once faced an issue that was (partially) overcome by science does not mean that the world, facing that same issue again, will experience a similar scientific breakthrough. It certainly does not mean that, faced with a completely different issue, we can count on science to provide the necessary solution within the necessary time frame.

Cain's resort to "science", really science fiction, as a solution to a real problem is scarcely more intellectually sound than Shimkus's reliance on God's promise not to again flood the world. While they practice their respective forms of faith, the rest of us need to keep working on a back up plan.

Sandusky's Sentence - Bad Joke of the Day

Jerry Sandusky gets 30 - 60 years. He had been hoping for 10 - 12.

(What a... sociopath.)

Daylight Between the U.S. and Its Allies

Daniel Larison comments on Mitt Romney's election rhetoric that there should be no "daylight" between America and allied governments:

Grant is correct that Romney’s criticism and understanding of U.S.-client relationships are nonsensical, but this isn’t the first time Romney has said this sort of thing. It has been true of Romney’s statements on this subject for months. Whether he has described it in terms of “no daylight” or “not an inch of difference” or “locking arms” with allied and client governments, Romney has made this nonsensical, unworkable idea a pillar of his foreign policy.

Larison goes on to state what should be obvious:

A major part of managing these relationships successfully is acknowledging disagreements when they exist, finding ways to work around them, and keeping them from derailing constructive relations in other areas. There will also be cases where different allied and friendly governments will have competing or contradictory interests. When that happens, the U.S. can’t be expected to side entirely with one party over another, and it certainly can’t support both states in their goals at the same time. Romney’s “not an inch of space” view would fail badly if it were put into practice, and the fact that Romney thinks this is a clever position to take suggests that he hasn’t given the matter much thought.

If a Democratic candidate were issuing similar statements, it is difficult to imagine that the Republicans would not (justifiably) ridicule it as weakness. We would hear about how when U.S. interests are at stake, if our allies want no daylight between their position and ours, our allies should do the moving. "You're either with us or against us."

There are reasons both parties at times, and with certain countries, make statements about special relationships, a near-perfect alignment of interests, and the like, no matter what the U.S. might do in the event of a direct clash of interests. With Romney we have the difficulty of having little sign that he has given any thought to foreign policy, and even less evidence that he has any real appreciation of the issues he addresses. He'll have some poll-driven talking points for the foreign policy elements of the upcoming debate but what does he actually believe? How could you possibly know?

My sense of Romney is that he genuinely believes in U.S. exceptionalism, and that his beliefs play into why he has given the issue so little thought. If God guides America's hand, you don't have to spend much time thinking about whether God is right or wrong. But by the same token, that would mean that his "daylight" comments, like pretty much everything else out of his mouth, is poll-driven demagoguery.