Baseball

American Presidents, Baseball, Federal Budget, Immigration, Obama, Politics

Go Big or Go Home

Posted on by christian

Barack ObamaOK, what does Barack Obama do now?

The president might start by remembering that there are three things in politics that can be enormously powerful, but are almost always vastly underrated particularly by risk averse officeholders. The three are acting against type, the element of surprise and the importance of timing.

Mr. Obama could grab on to all three tactics in the wake of the Republican disaster over the federal government shut down and the close encounter of the weird kind with the debt ceiling. The big three could help salvage his second term.

First is timing. The president must have woke up this morning and smiled while thinking that Sen. Ted Cruz, the gift that keeps on giving, is in the United States Senate. Cruz’s Tea Party-fueled crusade to defund Obamacare flamed out like a shooting star over west Texas and left the president with a stronger hand and a united Democratic Party. Sen. Cruz is more popular than ever with a vastly unpopular movement, while Congressional Republicans remain badly divided and without a coherent domestic agenda. The timing, therefore, is right for Mr. Obama to Go Big with a budget, revenue and reform proposal.

Next, let’s consider surprise. During so much of his presidency Mr. Obama has been content, even comfortable, letting Congress take the lead on big things. He did it with his signature Affordable Care Act (ACA) and completely lost control of the political message, a problem that he has never again been able to get in front of. Nancy Pelosi became the face of health care reform and the anti-Obama crowd skillfully framed the issue as a socialist, big government, job killing takeover of health care. Now, during the brief breathing spell post-shut down, the country and the GOP fully expect Obama to sit back and leave the avoidance of the next shut down and the next default dodge to a bunch of members of Congress who are completely focused on the next election. This is the old approach of trying the same thing over and over and hoping for different results. It’s insanity.

Surprise would be for Mr. Obama to lay out in a series of speeches, town hall meetings, interviews and news conferences a detailed plan to get budget/revenue and entitlement reform in place. Timing could meet surprise.

Finally, it’s time for the president to go against type. History may well record that the single worst decision of the president’s tenure was to turn his back on the Bowles -Simpson bi-partisan “grand bargain” to fix the budget, revenues and entitlements for a decade or more, while starting to reduce the national debt. Of course, Mr. Obama tried to make The Big Deal with House Speaker John Boehner and failed, but he also quietly walked away from Bowles-Simpson when he should have clutched the framework. Remember that he created The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and the co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson developed a real plan that gained bi-partisan Congressional support.

The timing, surprise factor and going against type, in this case embracing some GOP needs and holding off the left wing of of his own party, make great second term sense. Political commentator Andrew Sullivan has the same idea, as he has written:

“If the GOP were a genuinely conservative party, actually interested in long-term government solvency and reform within our current system of government, they would jump at this. They could claim to have reduced tax rates, even if the net result were higher taxes. And the brutal fact is that, given simply our demographics, higher taxes are going to be necessary if we are to avoid gutting our commitments to the seniors of tomorrow. They could concede that and climb down from this impossibly long limb they have constructed for themselves.

“I’ve long favored a Grand Bargain,” Sullivan continues, “but recognize its huge political liabilities without the leadership of both parties genuinely wanting to get there. But for Obama, it seems to me, re-stating such a possibility and embracing it more than he has ever done, is a win-win.”

For a politician with such obvious rhetoric gifts, Mr. Obama has a strange inability to state the most obvious things in simple, direct and understandable terms.

In the wake of the huge GOP meltdown, as the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank has written, Mr. Obama “spoke abstractly about ‘the long-term obligations that we have around things like Medicare and Social Security.’ He was similarly elliptical in saying he wants ‘a budget that cuts out the things that we don’t need, closes corporate tax loopholes that don’t help create jobs, and frees up resources for the things that do help us grow, like education and infrastructure and research.’

“Laudable ideas all,” Milbank says, but timidly said and lacking in real-world details. “Timidity and ambiguity in the past have not worked for Obama. The way to break down a wall of Republican opposition is to do what he did the past two weeks: stake out a clear position and stick to it. A plan for a tax-code overhaul? A Democratic solution to Medicare’s woes? As in the budget and debt fights, the policy is less important than the president’s ability to frame a simple message and repeat it with mind-numbing regularity.” Exactly.

Are there risks involved? Sure, but what does Mr. Obama really want out of the rest of his second term? Months and months of partisan haggling over non-issues? He should embrace the risk and put it all out on the table, otherwise why be president?

I suspect if one the smart pollsters measuring the declining standing of Sen. Cruz and the Tea Party’s approach to non-governance would ask one additional question they would find that the vast majority of Americans are ready – in fact clamoring for – real straight talk about specific policies that end the politics of going to the budget brink every few months.

The question I’d like to see asked in a national poll is pretty simple: “If President Obama proposed a specific plan to reduce long-term federal spending, reduce tax exemptions and lower tax rates, while ensuring the long-term viability of Social Security and Medicare would you be in favor?”

I’m betting the overwhelming answer would be YES. Timing, Surprise and Acting Against Type = a political strategy. That strategy is – Go Big.

 

American Presidents, Baseball, Civil War, Hatfield, Obama, Politics

The Age of Unreason

Posted on by christian

urlAs the United States slides into the second week of the “Seinfeld shutdown” – the federal government shutdown about nothing – and edges toward the certain financial disaster that would accompany a government default, who would have thought that one clear voice of reason would come with a French accent.

“If there is that degree of disruption, that lack of certainty, that lack of trust in the US signature, it would mean massive disruption the world over, and we would be at risk of tipping yet again into a recession,” said Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund.

Lagarde, who may find she needs her elegant scarves to protect against the frozen politics in Washington, made her doomsday prediction over the weekend in the capitol of dysfunction where the “wacko bird” fringe of the Tea Party, those who precipitated the shutdown – two first term U.S. Senators, one on the job since January the other for a year longer and the “game changer” from Alaska – demonstrated the range of their intellectual gymnastics by protested that “Obama’s shutdown” had forced National Park Service rangers off the job thereby barricading the World War II memorial on The Mall. Meanwhile, the minority within the minority that is the Tea Party, rallied in front of the White House with at least one protester waving the Confederate flag.

As Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg Tweeted, “in many parts of America, waving a Confederate flag outside the home of a black family would be considered a very hostile act.” But, hey, this is America in the 21st Century, an age of unreason where anything goes, including potentially the nation’s credit and the world’s economy.

By broad and deep consensus from the political right and left, the nullifiers in the Tea Party wing of the one-time party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan will emerge from the last month of sloganeering with lower approval ratings, less chance to take control of the United States Senate, dimmer prospects for winning the White House in 2016 and more determination than ever to take their party and the country in a new direction, even if it is over a cliff.

The Mind of the Tea Party

The modern Republican Party, at least the one we’ve known since Richard Nixon and until George W. Bush, was routinely defined by its opponents as a Chamber of Commerce country club elite, beholden to big business and responsive to Wall Street. But no longer.

A liberal columnist like the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky suggests the historic “business wing” of the GOP must save us all from the Ted Cruz-Sarah Palin wing because “this is the biggest political issue of our time…because a reasonable GOP would make the country governable again. A critical mass of conservative compromisers, with maybe a few genuinely moderate Republicans thrown in, would end this dysfunction more quickly than anything else.”

But Tomasky and many others, including many Democrats, underestimate the fear – and I use that word advisedly – that has helped create the world view of the current and more populist GOP. The Tea Party not only loathes the president, but also Wall Street, much popular culture, the media “establishment” – other than Fox News – and, most importantly, the leadership of the Republican Party.

Writing in the New York Times Thomas Edsall notes that, “animosity toward the federal government has been intensifying at a stunning rate. In a survey released on Sept. 23, Gallup found that the percentage of Republicans saying the federal government has too much power — 81 percent — had reached a record-setting level.” Combine that sentiment with “the findings of a Pew Research Center survey released four weeks ago. They show that discontent with Republican House and Senate leaders runs deep among Republican primary voters: two-thirds of them disapprove of their party’s Congressional leadership — John Boehner, the speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.” In short, the most Republican of Republicans dislike almost everything about their government, including the strange man in the White House and their own leaders.

Some of the most interesting and insightful research into the mind of the Tea Party voter comes from respected Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg who recently conducted a series of detailed focus groups to try and understand the thinking that has become the driving force in the new GOP politics.

“While many voters, including plenty of Democrats, question whether Obama is succeeding and getting his agenda done,” Greenberg reports. “Republicans think he has won. The country as a whole may think gridlock has triumphed, particularly in the midst of a Republican-led government shutdown, but Republicans see a president who has fooled and manipulated the public, lied, and gotten his secret socialist-Marxist agenda done. Republicans and their kind of Americans are losing.”

And there is this: Tea Party adherents “think they face a victorious Democratic Party that is intent on expanding government to increase dependency and therefore electoral support. It starts with food stamps and unemployment benefits; expands further if you legalize the illegals; but insuring the uninsured dramatically grows those dependent on government. They believe this is an electoral strategy — not just a political ideology or economic philosophy. If Obamacare happens, the Republican Party may be lost, in their view.”

If you embrace the idea, as many Americans quite clearly do, that the country is lost to them, then there is little to be lost from using what little power you have to shut down the government and blow up the economy. It’s the gruesome political equivalent of the U.S. commander in Southeast Asia who infamously declared that the Vietnamese village had to be destroyed in order to be saved.

Nullification

William Faulkner’s great line seems more appropriate than ever: “the past is never dead, it isn’t even past.” And the heart of the Tea Party message – that the country is doomed by the unconstitutional actions of an illegitimate president – is, as novel as it might seem daily on cable television, far from a new phenomenon. Frank Rich is one of the best at connecting the dots of our politics once our tiny attention spans have moved on to the next big thing. He reminds us in his latest New York magazine essay that we’ve seen this movie before.

“The political tactics and ideological conflicts are the same today as they were the last time around [1995].  Back then, the GOP was holding out for a budget that would deeply slash government health-care spending (in that case on Medicare) and was refusing to advance a clean funding bill that would keep the government open. The House also took the debt ceiling hostage, attaching a wish list of pet conservative causes to the routine bill that would extend it. That maneuver prompted Moody’s, the credit-rating agency, to threaten to downgrade Treasury securities, and Wall Street heavies like Felix Rohatyn to warn of impending economic catastrophe. The secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, juggled funds in federal accounts to delay default much as his protégé Jacob Lew was driven to do in the same Cabinet position now. Leon Panetta, then Clinton’s chief of staff, accused the Republicans of holding ‘a gun to the head of the president and the head of the country’ and likened their threats to ‘a form of terrorism.’”

The past that truly isn’t dead is what Frank Rich calls the precepts of the great pre-Civil War nullifier, John C. Calhoun, that have found voice in the 80 or so House Republicans who would destroy the economy to destroy Obamacare and, of course, given the current occupant of the Oval Office there are other factors at play.

“It was inevitable that when a black president took office, the racial fevers of secessionist history would resurface and exacerbate some of the radicals’ rage,” Rich says in helping us understand that rebel flag waving protester yesterday in front of the White House. But he also correctly notes that “to brand this entire cohort as racist is both incorrect and reductive. It under­estimates their broader ideological sway within their party. The unifying bogeyman for this camp is the federal government, not blacks or Hispanics, and that animus will remain undiminished after Obama’s departure from the White House.”

“We are upholding the true doctrines of the Federal Constitution,” the former Senator from Mississippi Jefferson Davis said in 1861 when he took the presidency of the eleven southern states who thought they could leave the Union after the election of a president the rebels considered illegitimate. It is not merely an historical oddity that today many of the highest profile leaders of the Republican Party from Cruz and Rubio to Cantor and Graham represent those eleven states – the true base of the GOP – in the U.S. Congress. Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky never seceded, but rather as the great Civil War historian Gary Gallagher once quipped, “joined the Confederacy after the war was over.” The great geographic outlier in the current GOP leadership is the embattled John Boehner from Ohio, a state that has produced eight Republican presidents, five of whom fought on the Union side in the War of the Rebellion.

Still the nullifiers have had some success because, as Thomas Edsall says, “a determined minority can do a lot in our system. It has already won the battle for the hearts and minds of the Republican House caucus. That is not a modest victory.” The same movement, we should remember, caused state legislatures from Idaho to Arizona to flirt with legislation to “nullify” the federal “tyranny” of Obamacare and many of the reddest states have refused to accept a key aspect of the law, the expansion of Medicare. It will be another victory for this philosophy when the Tea Party selects the next GOP presidential candidate, a Republican disciple one suspects far removed from the party’s last two candidates – John McCain and Mitt Romney.

No one knows the impact of the victory for the hearts and minds of the House Republican caucus more than the combative Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, who has been calling the shut down audibles for the Democrats. Knowing that this great civil war likely won’t be over any time soon, Reid – the former boxer – would love to go for a knockout, but will settle for a split decision. When your opponents think you’ve lied your way to power and believe the country is being destroyed it is not a great leap to say that the Founder’s Constitution is on their side, while they wrap themselves in the battle flag and fight, as another southerner used to say, “until the last dog dies.”

The elegant and precise International Monetary Fund president, Madam Lagarde, a member of the Socialist Party in France, must find all of this enormously confusing, not to say frightening. Like the rest of us, she’d better get used to it. True believers, after all, don’t often change.

 

Baseball, Catholic Church, Guns, Politics

The Power of Humility

Posted on by christian

The-Pope_2514251bMy reaction to the remarkable interview with Pope Francis that dominated the international news cycle last week was hardly unique. The New York Times’ Frank Bruni wrote Sunday about having the same feeling.

“It was the sweetness in his timbre, the meekness of his posture,” Bruni wrote that was truly remarkable. “It was the revelation that a man can wear the loftiest of miters without having his head swell to fit it, and can hold an office to which the term ‘infallible’ is often attached without forgetting his failings. In the interview, Francis called himself naïve, worried that he’d been rash in the past and made clear that the flock harbored as much wisdom as the shepherds. Instead of commanding people to follow him, he invited them to join him. And did so gently, in what felt like a whisper.”

As a general rule Pope’s don’t do interviews or if they do they speak in a certain Vatican code that is as difficult to decipher as a Ben Bernacke news conference. And when a pope speaks it is not typically in a whisper. Yet, the Argentine Jesuit who has been surprising the world since moving to Rome earlier this year sat for three different interview sessions and then gave the transcript the papal seal of approval by looking it over. In all his answers he spoke like a real person on everything from the Church’s fixation with abortion and gay marriage to his own taste in movies and art. Even before the blockbuster interview that appeared around the world in Jesuit journals Francis was shunning popely convention, as well as the royal trappings and red shoes of the Bishop of Rome, by living in a guest house and working the phones.

Remarkable. Also hugely important, not just for his message of inclusion and self-reflection, but for his style. His Holiness has provided a lesson to leaders – or alleged leaders – in our modern culture, whether they be in business, politics or entertainment on how to lead.

If you are an American Catholic who believes the Church has strayed from the Gospel message focused on works of charity and taking care of the poor and disaffected the Pope’s lengthy interview provides a welcome dose of hope. For those inclined to embrace the Church’s unfailing focus on abortion and gay marriage the Pope has no doubt created some heartburn in the pews. Even the doctrinaire Archbishop of New York had to admit that the big-minded Pope had created “a breath of fresh air.”

Reading the remarkable interview one come away with the impression of a man of faith who, like most of us, struggles with that faith. In how he wages that struggle is the essence of leadership in the modern age – humility, candor, humor, an appeal to reason and above all inclusion.

Contrast Pope Francis’ approach with the senseless bickering and daily preening of small-minded leaders in Washington, D.C. Oh but to possess the certainty of a Sen. Ted Cruz, a young man who has been in the Senate for weeks and has seen his head grow daily ever larger as he speaks as the oracle of the ages that he apparently believes himself to be. So full of their convictions and themselves are Cruz and his Tea Party acolytes that they threaten, bluster and filibuster the country to the edge of another fiscal cliff to unfund a law that both houses of Congress passed and the president signed – three and a half years ago.

In the depressing aftermath of another mass murder by guns, this time in the nation’s capitol, the NRA’s mouthpiece rails against the “broken” mental health system, but nowhere hints at even a tiny bit of humbleness that might acknowledge that the gun culture the NRA helped create might – just might – have something to do with the outrageous level of gun violence in America. In this ever-so-sure world there are never shades of grey only moral certainty articulated in a loud voice.

Or consider those members of Congress like Indiana Republican Marlin Stutzman who voted recently to throw several million poor Americans off food stamps in a move that the Congressman casually says “eliminates loopholes, ensures work requirements, and puts us on a fiscally responsible path.” Mr. Stutzman’s appeal to reason doesn’t look so good when you understand that he  took away $39 billion in food assistance with one hand, while cashing in on his own $200,000 farm subsidy with the other and he wasn’t alone. A “fiscally responsible path” obviously only leads to the other guys door.

I could go on, but you get the drift. Little wonder Americans have essentially given up on their political leaders handing the Congress a 20% approval rating, which is actually up a couple of points apparently because voters are embracing Congressional reluctance to rush into another war. Imagine that. Still compared to the enormous problems we face – from gun violence to failing schools, from climate change to a middling economy – the swelled heads who might actually try to tackle those problems seem so very small, so very petty and so very lacking in humility.

As Frank Bruni wrote of the Pope, “authority can come from a mix of sincerity and humility as much as from any blazing, blinding conviction, and that stature is a respect you earn, not a pedestal you grab. That’s a useful lesson in this grabby age of ours.”

Pope Francis, the Jesuit scholar who loves Mozart, Puccini and Fellini’s films, knows something most people in modern public life seem unwilling to learn. You lead not by having the best daily soundbite or finding the newest, most novel way to insult your opponent, but by walking in the other person’s shoes, understanding their motivations and fears and by appealing not to the crassness of partisan politics, but to the sweet reason that is the product of  facts and candor and trust.

“We must walk united with our differences: there is no other way to become one. This is the way of Jesus” says the pontiff from Buenos Aires. This still new Pope is doing something Washington, D.C. hasn’t done for a long time. He’s making sense.

Baseball, Civil Rights, Johnson, Politics, Religion, Television

So Much and So Little Has Changed

Posted on by christian

march-on-washingtonThere must be some cosmic significance (or perhaps the gods of politics are just into irony) that the 50th anniversary of the great March on Washington in August of 1963 is being celebrated at the same time that the United States Justice Department is suing the great state of Texas over changes in voting rules that could well prevent minority voters from casting ballots.

The great theme in all the coverage leading up to the actual anniversary of the March and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s remarkable “I Have a Dream Speech” has been the phrase, “we have come so far and we still have work to do.”

Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who was with King that day 50 years ago, told an Atlanta television station, “We’ve made a lot of progress, but we must continue to go forward and we must never ever become bitter or hostile, we must continue to walk with peace, love and nonviolence to create a truly multiracial democratic society. Our country is a better country and we are a better people. The signs that I saw before making it to Washington, they’re gone and they will not return, and the only places our children will see those signs will be in a book, in a museum or on a video. So when people say nothing has changed, I say come and walk in my shoes,” Lewis said.

The Congressman then adds that Dr. King would tell us we still have work to do. Indeed, America, we still have work to do.

Losing Ground

The Pew Research Center’s recent study on “Race in America” helps measure just how much work remains. Among the findings in the Pew study: Fewer than 50% of Americans believe the country has made substantial progress in the direction of racial equality since Dr. King envisioned the day when his “four little children” would live in nation “where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” About half of those surveyed said a “lot more needs to be done” to create a truly color blind society.

What is perhaps most discouraging in the Pew study is the retreat – not the forward progress – that has taken place on key measures over the last 20-plus years. For example, the gaps between whites and blacks on measures like median income and total household income have actually grown in that period when measured in 2012 dollars. Put another way, there is work to be done to get back to where the country stood in 1980. There’s more. Black Americans are three times more likely than whites to live in poverty and black home ownership is 60% of that for whites. Black rates of marriage are lower and out-of-wedlock births higher than for whites.

It is hard to look at all these numbers and wonder why John Lewis maintains his optimism until one remembers that he was nearly killed marching for voting rights in Alabama in 1965. He’s the first to say that such politically motivated violence has – mostly – disappeared in America. What hasn’t disappeared, it would seem, are efforts to make it more difficult for people of color, poor people and the elderly to vote and participate in a meaningful way in our politics. Texas is currently ground zero in this debate since the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision threw out the requirement that Texas and other mostly southern states need to gain “preclearance” from the Justice Department before changing election laws.

Texas hardly waited until the ink was dry on Chief Justice John Robert’s opinion wiping out a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act before implementing a new voter ID law that many observers believe will make it more difficult for some folks – minorities, the poor and the elderly – to vote. Texas is also going forward with a redistricting plan that many believe is stacked against minority voters.

In announcing the Texas lawsuit Attorney General Eric Holder said: “The Department will take action against jurisdictions that attempt to hinder access to the ballot box, no matter where it occurs. We will keep fighting aggressively to prevent voter disenfranchisement. We are determined to use all available authorities, including remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act, to guard against discrimination and, where appropriate, to ask federal courts to require preclearance of new voting changes. This represents the Department’s latest action to protect voting rights, but it will not be our last.”

The political reaction in Texas was predictable as Politico reported. “The filing of endless litigation in an effort to obstruct the will of the people of Texas is what we have come to expect from Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama,” said Gov. Rick Perry. “We will continue to defend the integrity of our elections against this administration’s blatant disregard for the 10th Amendment.”

“Facts mean little to a politicized Justice Department bent on inserting itself into the sovereign affairs of Texas and a lame-duck administration trying to turn our state blue,” Sen. John Cornyn said. “As Texans we reject the notion that the federal government knows what’s best for us. We deserve the freedom to make our own laws and we deserve not to be insulted by a Justice Department committed to scoring cheap political points.”

Consider this tidbit from the earlier mentioned Pew survey. “Participation rates for blacks in presidential elections has lagged behind those of whites for most of the past half century but has been rising since 1996. Buoyed by the historic candidacies of Barack Obama, blacks nearly caught up with whites in 2008 and surpassed them in 2012, when 67% of eligible blacks cast ballots, compared with 64% of eligible whites.” We know, of course, that blacks tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. The black vote was critical in both Obama’s elections for the White House and helped turn once solidly Republican states like Virginia and North Carolina competitive for a Democratic presidential candidate. Many experts think Texas is next, but only if the fast growing African-American and Latino voters in Texas have a chance to vote in growing numbers.

The More Things Change

In 1949, a young United States Senator from Texas made his maiden speech on the floor of the Senate defending the southern use of the filibuster to turn back all manner of civil rights legislation. In that maiden speech the young senator talked about federal legislation to outlaw the poll tax, which was of course in an earlier day designed to keep blacks from voting, when he said such heavy handed government intrusion was “wholly unconstitutional and violate[s] the rights of the States.” The south, the senator said, certainly didn’t discriminate, these things were being handled and whats more the south really didn’t appreciate the federal government interfering with its business. State’s rights and all that.

It’s almost as if Lyndon Johnson in 1949 could have been writing Rick Perry’s press releases in 2013. Johnson, famously and historically, changed over time and signed the landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Still, from 1949 to 2013, the similarity of the political rhetoric from the young Lyndon to the blow-dried Rick Perry is stunning. Neither one talks about race, but it is all about race.

Under the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1870, the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” There is nothing in that amendment about “sovereign states” or that states “deserve the freedom to make” their own laws. The amendment is not ambiguous. It doesn’t require a lot of analysis. The words speak for themselves. The Voting Rights Act was the means Congress chose in 1965 to enforce the amendment until the Court’s recent ruling. So much has changed and yet so little has changed.

For much longer than a century the basic act of citizenship – the right to vote – was systematically denied millions of citizens. If we consider nothing else as we mark the anniversary of that historic March on a hot August day 50 years ago, we would be wise to consider, with all the work that remains to be done to “perfect” our Union, that we cannot tolerate policies and politics that actually cause black Americans to lose hard fought ground; ground we should all be proud we have gained since that great March.

 

Baseball, Huntsman, Politics, Television

Art Imitates Politics

Posted on by christian

Kevin-Spacey-says-House-of-Cards-proves-TV-smarter-than-musicBarney Frank, the shy and retiring retired Congressman from Massachusetts, who has his name and political legacy attached to the controversial Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation has been in the news this week, not as a political pundit, but rather as a television critic.

In an Op-Ed piece – it’s always an Op-Ed piece, isn’t it, where news is made these days – Frank allowed as how the hit show House of Cards, with the excellent Kevin Spacey as uber-Congressman Frank Underwood, really isn’t how politics in Washington (or the USA) really works.

“House of Cards,” Frank writes, “has no stronger relation to political reality than the ratings given by Standard and Poor’s to packages of subprime mortgages had to economic truth.

“Having watched several episodes, I agree that it is well acted. My problem is that it might mislead people into thinking that this is the way our political system actually works. It is not.”

Really?

OK, granted that Rep. Frank makes it clear that no one member of the current Congress is as powerful or successful as Rep. Frank Underwood and that nothing is quite so easily manipulated as what he accomplishes in 60 minute bursts.  Still, one only has to check out the daily headlines to confirm that shows like House of Cards and other politically themed shows of the moment, including The Newsroom and The Veep, offer story lines that almost seem quaint when compared to the real thing.

Let’s consider Sen. Ted Cruz, but only for a minute.

How is this for an episode of House of Cards? Rep. Underwood, always thinking three steps ahead of the White House and his opponents, discovers that a potential rival who may one day be a candidate for president and has made his brief national reputation opposing immigration reform was actually, wait – suspend your disbelief – born in Canada! Our make believe Rep. Underwood, using his vast contacts in the D.C. media, leaks the whole story causing the rival to renounce his heretofore unknown dual citizenship, produce his birth certificate and, not incidentally, look like a hypocrite. The rival, let’s cast him as an upstart U.S. Senator from Texas, is left to mutter that politics has entered “the silly season.”

Spoiler alert: when all a politician can say regarding his predicament, whether on the big screen, small screen or in “real” life, is “this is the silly season,” he has been had. But, back to Barney Frank. My make believe episode of House of Cards involving an upstart, anti-immigration reform Texas senator is just too far out to pass the D.C. smell test. I get it.

But how about cooking up a story line about a certain New York City mayor’s race? Forget the Tweetting Twit Anthony Weiner (and wouldn’t we all like to) and let’s talk about the new frontrunner in the race to succeed the billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is only mayor because he manipulated the electoral system in the Big Apple so that he could win a third term. No Kevin Spacey/Frank Underwood-like intrigue in that, right? Moving right along.

So, the latest front runner is a fella named Bill de Blasio who jumped to the head of the crowded field just as it was revealed that he is a life-long Boston Red Sox fan, which to many New Yorkers is about as politically correct as saying Benito Mussolini was just a misunderstood Italian. But, wait, there is more. It turns out that de Blasio’s wife Chirlane McCray is, well let’s allow the stylish Maureen Dowd explain, as she did in her New York Times column:

“Last spring,” Dowd wrote, “McCray did an interview with Essence magazine about her feelings about being a black lesbian who fell in love with a white heterosexual, back in 1991, when she worked for the New York Commission on Human Rights and wore African clothing and a nose ring and he was an aide to then-Mayor David Dinkins. With her husband, she was also interviewed by the press in December and was asked if she was no longer a lesbian, and she answered ambiguously: ‘I am married. I have two children. Sexuality is a fluid thing, and it’s personal. I don’t even understand the question, quite frankly.'”

Let’s see, add that plot line to Weiner’s tweets of private parts and to the former front runner Christine Quinn’s storyline as married lesbian without children who is now defending “childless families” and I guess a “real” campaign just has nothing on television drama.

Anything else? OK, turn the dial to The Newsroom, the Aaron Sorkin-created HBO drama about a cable news operation that stars Jeff Daniels as the Republican anchorman who finds himself constantly at odds with the Tea Party wing of the GOP. Any similarity to Morning Joe, the MSNBC show that stars a former Republican Congressman, is strictly aimed at making Barney Frank dizzy. Such things simply don’t happen in the “real” world. Trust me.

Which brings me to Roger Ailes who has fired his long-time PR guy, Brian Lewis, at Fox News the other day. As the understated New York Daily News put it, “When the ax fell on the senior flack — who was Ailes’ chief adviser and oversaw public relations for Fox News, Fox Business Network, Fox Television and Twentieth Television — security staff escorted him out of his Sixth Ave. office, according to the Hollywood Reporter.” Move along, people, nothing to see here. This is too crazy for mere art. It doesn’t pass the test of being anything like the way the “real” world works. Nope.

OK, how about this as a story line: One the world’s richest men, a technology entrepreneur who owns a huge company that exists to sell things to customers who provide lots of personal information over the Internet, buys one of the nation’s most politically important newspapers in the capitol of that nation where government officials can regulate his business? Crazy, right? Wait, how about we add that the tech guy’s company is a big government contractor who sells technology services to the government at a time when government spy programs are all over the news and he seems to be something of a Libertarian? No way that makes it into a Sorkin script for The Newsroom. No way. Way too unbelievable.

But, back to the former Barney Frank. Here’s part of his Op-Ed take down of House of Cards.

“House of Cards demeans the democratic process in ways that are unfair, inaccurate, and if they were to be believed by a substantial number of the public, deeply unfortunate.

“The character is wholly amoral. He has no political principles, either substantive or procedural. There is no issue about which he cares; no tactic he will not employ, no matter how unfair it is to others; and he is thoroughly dishonest.

“I have never met anyone in a position of power in Congress who resembles that caricature.”

Barney is spending the summer in Maine. Maybe he’s eaten too much lobster or gotten too much fresh air. The really unbelievable thing about House of Cards is that Spacey’s Frank Underwood is a Democratic congressman from South Carolina. At least that part of House of Cards really doesn’t pass the Washington, D.C. smell test. A Democrat from South Carolina? Unreal.

Come to think of it, how about an episode featuring a loud, opinionated, gay Congressman (who once faced scandal because his boy friend who turned out to be a male prostitute) who passes major financial services legislation in the wake of the greatest financial meltdown since the Great Depression and then sees its implementation stalled in part by a Congress where the financial industry has lavished campaign contributions. You’re right. Couldn’t happen.

Let’s be real. Kevin Spacey and Aaron Sorkin know something Barney Frank doesn’t, but should. You can make this stuff up, but you don’t really need to.

 

 

American Presidents, Andrus, Baseball, FDR, Obama, Politics

Why Politics Ain’t Fun…Anymore

Posted on by christian

ap320763252878Jack Germond, a classic ink-stained wretch straight out of The Front Page, loved politics and politicians until he didn’t any longer.

Germond, who died this week at age 85, was definitely of the “old school.” He knew how to change a typewriter ribbon and I’ll bet he once had a bead on every pay phone in Iowa and in New Hampshire. Germond once said that he covered politics like a horse race because, while most voters do want to know what a candidate stands for, they also really want to know who has the best chance to win an election. But Jack was also old school in that he wanted to know about candidates as real people. What motivated them? What did they really care about? Could they think?

When the gruff, opinionated, smoking, steak-eating, Martini-drinking reporter hung it up in 2001 he told NPR’s Bob Edwards that he had grown “sick of politics.”

“I got sick of politics, Bob,” Germond said. “I particularly got sick of these two candidates this year. You know, you get to the point — you know, you’re 72 years old and you’re covering George W. Bush and Al Gore and you say, ‘How do I explain that to my grandkids?’ I mean, that’s terrible.”

Like a lot of us, I suspect, ol’ Jack grew tired of the phony rituals of modern politics, the lack of authenticity and the campaigns that have become almost completely driven by too young men (and some women) in suits and iPads who think they know everything there is to know about survey research, but have never met a sheriff or walked a precinct for a state legislative candidate.

Candid, Opinionated, Unpredictable

Ask any reporter – or voter – the type of politician they most appreciate and you’ll often hear that they like the candid, opinionated guy (or woman) who isn’t over programmed and not completely predictable. But increasingly we get just the opposite. If you’ve heard one Mitch McConnell speech or one Harry Reid soundbite you’ve pretty much heard all they have to offer, or at least all they think they can offer safely. The typical modern politician is so scripted, so committed to “staying on message” and so determined not to offend “the base” that they often say virtually nothing of importance. In place of real thinking that might generate a new idea the typical pol – the guys Germond got sick of – falls back on the safe and practiced. It may be boring, but it’s poll-tested.

Germond told the Washington Post that he got pretty stiff drinking Scotch with presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy during a plane ride in 1968. “We started talking about the kids we’d seen in the ghetto that day,” Mr. Germond said years later. “He wasn’t trying to plant a story. He was really interested in the subject and really affected by what he’d seen.” Imagine that. A politician letting the human side show through. It used to happen, but not much anymore.

The statute of limitations has long since expired so I can safely reveal that former Idaho state senator, Lt. Governor and eventually Gov. Phil Batt used to drink with reporters. He actually seemed to like it, too. Years ago when Idaho Statehouse reporters were first consigned to quarters in the deep basement of the Capitol Building, Batt would often come down on a Friday night when the business of the legislative session was done for the week and have a pop or two with the scribbling class. As I remember it Jim Fisher, then a political reporter for the Lewiston Tribune, had a deep desk drawer that could accommodate a bottle of something that was technically illegal to consume on state property. Those of us fortunate enough to sit in on Phil Batt’s off-the-record “news conference” quickly discovered all the stories we’d missed during the week, the latest lobbyist out of favor and which legislator with a wandering eye was hitting on which committee secretary. I don’t remember that any stories were planted, but much insight was gained.

Politics was fun then, but rarely is anymore.

Obama the Predictable

The cerebral and increasingly buttoned-down Barack Obama seemed about as fun as a root canal when he took questions from the White House press corps before flying off to his Martha’s Vineyard vacation the other day. Obama was asked about Republican threats to shut down the government or even default on government obligations rather than approve funding for the hated Obamacare. Obama, of course, gave a completely predictable response.

“The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million people from getting health care is a bad idea,” the president said. “What you should be thinking about is how can we advance and improve ways for middle-class families to have some security so that if they work hard, they can get ahead and their kids can get ahead.”

“Middle-class families” must be the most focus group tested terminology in American politics, but it has almost nothing to do with what you know Obama is really thinking. Regardless of what you think of Obamacare wouldn’t you like the Commander-in-Chief to show a little emotion just once in a while? Imagine the cool POTUS popping his top with some Harry Truman-style rhetoric.

“Let me tell you what I think  of this kind of threat: let them try it,” Obama might have said. “The Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – is the law of the land. John Boehner has tried more than 40 times to undo it, but he can’t and he won’t. Shutting down the government or defaulting on our debt is just plain crazy. If my GOP friends want to be out-of-power for a generation, I’d advise they listen to the crazy caucus on the fringe and shut down the government – again. It worked so well for them last time.

“And while I’m on the subject, the next time a Republican says they want to do away with health insurance for all American ask them what they intend to replace it with? Does the Speaker or Sen. Rubio or Sen. Cruz have an answer to millions of Americans without health insurance? Do they like the idea that we have the most expensive health care in the world and far from the best health care in the world? What do they suggest would happen to the hospitals, doctors and insurance companies who are months into implementing a law that Congress passed and the United States Supreme Court reviewed and upheld? Boehner and Rubio and Cruz are without ideas. All they are sure of is that they don’t like me. I’m used to it. Now they should get used to the idea of me being in the White House for another three years.”

OK, I made all of that up, but you get the point. Authentic can’t be polled tested. You can’t easily fake being steamed. Candor in our politics has become as rare as Scotch in a desk drawer.

FDR is Still the Gold Standard

In her excellent new book – 1940 – FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler and the Election Amid the Storm – historian Susan Dunn tells the gripping story of one of the most consequential presidential elections in our history. With war raging in Europe, the 1940 election came down to two issues – a third term for Franklin Roosevelt and the direction of the nation’s foreign policy. Late in his campaign against businessman Wendell Willkie, FDR took on his opponents with candor, humor and their own words. It is what politicians used to do.

“For almost seven years the Republican leaders in Congress kept on saying that I was placing too much emphasis on national defense,” Roosevelt said in an October 1940 speech at Madison Square Garden. “And now today these men of great vision have suddenly discovered that there is a war going on in Europe and another one in Asia! And so, now, always with their eyes on the good old ballot box, they are charging that we have placed too little emphasis on national defense.”

Then, to use his word, FDR indicted his Republican opponents using their own words and their own votes. Roosevelt listed by name the GOP leaders, including Willkie’s running mate, who had voted repeatedly against defense appropriations. Then, with perfect timing, the president made his audience laugh along with him at the poetic mention of three of his most partisan and obstructionist opponents.

“Now wait,” Roosevelt said with a big smile, “a perfectly beautiful rhythm – Congressmen Martin, Barton and Fish!”

Willkie later said, “When I heard the president hang the isolationist votes of Martin, Barton, and Fish on me and get away with it, I knew I was licked.”

The old school politics that Jack Germond loved have gone the way of the pay phone, replaced by 30 second attack ads, robo calls and bland and completely predictable rhetoric that is virtually devoid of passion, substance and humor. No wonder Jack got sick of politics. He could remember when it was fun and better.

Politics shouldn’t be blood sport, but having a little blood flowing in your veins is entirely appropriate. Modern politics would be a good deal more interesting and a lot less dysfunctional if politicians quit thinking that authenticity, candor, a little fire in the belly and a dose of humor were somehow political liabilities.

How about a little more passion like “Martin, Barton and Fish” and a little less babble about “middle class families.”

 

Andrus, Baseball, Boise, Cenarrusa, Crisis Communication, Hatfield, Idaho, Nobel Prizes, Oregon, Politics

The Middle Doesn’t Hold

Posted on by christian

howard-deanLots of Democrats like Howard Dean the former Vermont governor because he can almost always be counted on to be a full-throated partisan. Cable news loves the one-time Democratic presidential candidate because he’s always ready to launch an attack the other side. Nothing subtle or nuanced about Dean. In his world the Democrats – make that the most liberal Democrats – are always right and the Republicans are a bunch of knuckle-dragging throwbacks to the 19th Century. He has nearly as little use for a Democrat who wanders off the party reservation.

Lots of Republicans, particularly the Tea Party wing of the party, love the Club for Growth and its mouthpiece former Rep. Chris Chocola because the Club and the former Congressman can always be counted on to attack any Republican who dares to veer, even ever so slightly, from the group’s unyielding anti-tax, anti-government agenda. The Club for Growth has established itself as the enforcer of GOP orthodoxy on taxes and the scope of government. As a Republican you cross this crowd with full knowledge that they know how to buy television attack ads and have money to burn.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: consider Exhibits A and B in the sad and troubling case of who murdered moderation in American politics. The loud and often unreasonable voices of guys like Dean and Chocola  increasingly dominate political discussion and they are largely getting away with the political murder of moderation because we’re letting them. If you enjoy dysfunction in Washington, D.C. keep rewarding the Deans and Chocolas. Their political oxygen depends on squeezing the last breath out of anyone who even looks like a moderate.

Dean, of course, has his own political action committee and says he’s “open,” despite the legendary “scream from Iowa” heard round the world in 2004, to another run for president in 2016. He’ll undoubtedly run as a divider and not a uniter. Dean made news in Oregon this week, which he no doubt wanted to do, for launching a Twitter attack on a prominent Democratic state senator who had the gall to buck her party on a couple of high profile votes during the recently adjourned Oregon legislative session. Sen. Betsy Johnson did vote with Oregon Democrats 90% of the time during the recent legislative session, but in Dean’s “no room for moderates” world the senator, because she crossed her party on a couple of issues, needs to be challenged and replaced.

Chocola was out this week with an equally bizarre attack on Idaho Republican Congressman Mike Simpson. The Club for Growth announced it had endorsed a novice Republican from Idaho Falls, Bryan Smith, who is challenging the widely-respected eight-term chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee that just happens to be vital to Idaho. Club for Growth calls Simpson “one of the biggest liberals in the Republican Party,” which is nonsense bordering on political malpractice as anyone who really knows the Congressman can attest. Simpson is, by any realistic measure, a very conservative Republican. He’s gone down the line with the NRA, opposed Obamacare and has battled the EPA over budgets and regulation, among other things. What he is not is a knuckle-dragger always in lock step with the far right.

Challenger Smith, who the Club apparently recruited for a Simpson primary challenge by trolling the Internet, was endorsed because he opposed Idaho Falls city property tax increases and criticized the Supreme Court on its health care ruling. Quite a record. Sign him up. The guy sounds like he’ll dependably put his rock on the “no” button if, against all logic and likelihood, he should happen to make it to Congress.

Simpson, probably because he spent his formative political years in the Idaho House of Representatives, including a successful stint as Speaker, while a politically skillful and successful Democrat held the governor’s office, has never automatically assumed every person across the aisle is an opponent worthy of being savaged from Twin Falls to Twitter. Simpson actually thinks a legislator’s job is to try and make the government work. He knows his district’s economy depends on the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and that contrary to Club for Growth-like thinking maybe, just maybe, he needs from-time-to-time to be able to work with an ideological opposite  in order to keep the Department of Energy budget working for the nation and his district. We used to call that politics and it still amounts to governing.

Simpson’s real concern to Club for Growth is that he has dared to speak what every sensible person in Washington and the nation knows to be the truth about the federal budget: To secure a long-term and stable fiscal situation for the country Republicans and Democrats must come together and address spending, entitlements and – brace yourself – future revenues. In other words, Simpson has said what Simpson-Bowles have said and what Warren Buffett has said, in fact what every responsible person in the country has said about the nation’s fiscal and budget policies. In short, Mike Simpson is a conservative Republican who understands that finding common ground on major issues isn’t treason, but rather statesmanship.

Howard Dean and his like on the political left and Chris Chocola and his ilk on the right play only one political note: a high pitched squeal that can best be heard by the most partisan folks in both political parties. Such silliness has been at the heart of the near death of moderation in our politics and in Idaho in the past it has given the state such stellar Members of Congress as former Rep. Bill Sali, once championed and elected thanks to the million dollar largess of Club for Growth. Sali’s inept and embarrassing single term in Congress was highlighted by his introduction of legislation repealing the law of gravity. It’s true. You can look it up.

Come election day here’s betting that Rep. Simpson in Idaho and State Sen. Johnson in Oregon will be returned to office. Their constituents like them and know them. Both of them seem willing to defend common sense, which thankfully some voters still appreciate. Others elsewhere who practice the once celebrated political art of moderation may not fare as well and what former Sen. Al Simpson of Wyoming calls “the 100% crowd” – those who insist on unbending fidelity to their way of thinking – will have won yet another battle against realistic government.

Once upon a time pragmatic voters in places like Oregon and Idaho rewarded stubbornly independent moderates like the late, great Republican governor and senator Mark O. Hatfield and the former Democratic governor and Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus. Hatfield built a career around charting his own course for Oregon in the Senate, often tilting against Republican presidents, and Andrus often publicly disowned the excesses of national Democrats and delighted in doing so while his Idaho constituents sent him to the Statehouse four times over three decades. Today such political heresy would spur a social media attack followed by a primary challenge.

Our national history tells us clearly that political independence and moderation really should be cause for celebration, but the political ayathollahs of the American left and right are as determined to slay the last visages of moderation as are the political absolutists who rule in Teheran.

Americans are united in condemning one group of fundamentalist crazies. We ought also unite in condemning those who fuliminate to kill moderation closer to home.

 

Baseball, Baucus, Cenarrusa, Clinton, Idaho, Montana, Nobel Prizes, Oregon, Politics, U.S. Senate

Appointing Senators

Posted on by christian

senateSam Ervin, the white haired Constitutional law expert from North Carolina who presided over the most famous and consequential Senate investigation ever, may never have made it to Senate had he not first been appointed to the job. That’s Ervin in the photo surrounded by Watergate committee staff and Sen. Howard Baker in 1972.

Ervin, appointed in 1954, served 20 years in the Senate and is now remembered to history for his drawling, gentlemanly and expert handling of the investigation that exposed the corruption at the very top of the Nixon White House. Ervin is one of about 200 people appointed to the Senate by governors since we started the direct election of Senators in 1913. All but seven of the Senators by stroke of the pen have been men.

As New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie considers his enormously high profile appointment to fill the seat vacated by the death of long-time Sen. Frank Lautenberg, it’s worth pondering the unique gubernatorial power under our system to literally create a senator. There is nothing else quite like it in our politics.

In keeping with his flamboyant style, Christie made news by saying he’ll appoint a temporary replacement and then immediately call a special primary election in August and then a Senate election in October, just weeks before Christie himself faces the voters, in order to give New Jersey voters a say in who their senator will be. New Jersey will then vote again for a Senator in November 2014. If all this plotting seems a little too calculating even for Gov. Christie then welcome to the strange world of appointed senators.

The analysis of Christie’s strategy has been rich and for a political junkie intoxicating. The governor knows he needs to make an appointment, but by calling a quick election to either validate or reject his appointee Christie (perhaps) can distance himself from his own pick. By scheduling the election three weeks before his own re-election goes to the voters Christie can get the complicated Senate business out of the way in hopes it won’t impact issues or turnout in his campaign. Or…well, offer your own theory.

One thing seems certain in New Jersey. Christie is too smart and too politically savvy to appoint himself. That has been tried and never works. Montana Gov. John Erickson orchestrated such a self-appointment in the early 1930’s and he subsequently lost when voters correctly concluded the appointment smacked too much of a backroom deal. Same thing happened with Idaho Governor-turned-Senator Charles Gossett in the 1940’s. Gossett resigned as governor having cut a deal with his Lt. Gov. Arnold Williams to immediate appointment him to the Senate. Voters punished both at the next opportunity. In 1946 the Senate actually had two self-appointed Senators – Gossett and Nevada’s Edward P. Carville who cut the same deal with his second-in-command. Carville also lost a subsequent bid to retain his self-appointed Senate seat. History tells us there is not a high bar to Senate appointments, but one thing that doesn’t pass the voter’s smell test is an appointment that smacks of an inside deal. Note that Christie made a point in his public comments to say he wouldn’t be part of such a deal, but his appointment when it comes will be scrubbed up one side and down the other for hints of just such a deal.

Idaho is actually in the running for the most appointed Senators – six by my count – with one of that number, Sen. John Thomas, actually appointed twice, once in 1928 and again in 1940. Alaska’s Ted Stevens first came to the Senate by appointment, so did Maine’s George Mitchell (a future majority leader) and Minnesota’s Walter Mondale (a future vice president). Oregon’s great Sen. Charles McNary came to the Senate by appointment and stayed to become a respected Republican leader and vice presidential candidate in 1940. Washington’s three-term Gov. Dan Evans was later appointed to the Senate. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, a great leader on foreign policy during the early Cold War years, was an appointed Senator, so too Mississippi’s James O. Eastland, a power on the Judiciary Committee and a six-term Senator after his appointment.

Virginia’s Carter Glass had a remarkable political career – Congressman, Secretary of the Treasury, appointed Senator who went on to serve 26 years in the Senate and become an authority on banking and finance. The Glass-Steagall Act, a hallmark of the early New Deal regulation of banking, bares his name.

Only a handful of women have come to the Senate by the appointment path and most have replaced their husbands. Rose McConnell Long filled out the remainder of husband Huey’s term in 1935 and 1936, but opted not to run herself. Arkansas’ Hattie Caraway was appointed to fill the term of her deceased husband and then became the first women elected in her own right to the Senate in 1932. She won another election in 1938 and then lost a Democratic primary in 1944 to J. William Fulbright who went on to become one of the giants of the Senate.

Gov. Christie has a lot to ponder as he considers creating a United States Senator with the stroke of a pen. Will he create a Thomas Taggart of Indiana or an Irving Drew of New Hampshire? Both were appointed Senators and, don’t be embarrassed, there is absolutely no reason you should have ever heard of either one. Taggart, a Democrat, served a little over seven months in 1916 and lost an election bid. Drew, a Republican, served barely two months in 1918 and didn’t bother to run on his own. For every Sam Ervin or Charles McNary there is an appointed Senator who is something less than a household name.

Maybe Christie create a Senator like Idaho’s Len Jordan, a former governor appointed to the Senate in 1962 who went on to twice win election in his own right and establish a solid legislative record.

If history is a guide, Christie will reward a loyal and safe member of his own party – former Gov. Tom Kean for example – and someone unable or unwilling to overshadow the governor. The person appointed must also fulfill the fundamental qualification for the office – do no harm to the person making the appointment. Did I mention that appointing a Senator is just about the most political thing any governor can do? It’s going to be rich political theater to watch and analyze the actions of the governor of New Jersey who both wants to be re-elected this fall and run for president in 2016. Let the appointing begin.

 

Baseball, Congress, House of Representatives, Politics, Stimpson, Thatcher

Congress Investigates

Posted on by christian

You could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that the only thing Congress really seems to do these days is launch investigation after investigation of the Executive Branch. The chief House investigator, California Republican Darrell Issa, is a southern California multi-millionaire and a tough partisan who made his fortunate in the car alarm business. His voice – “Step away from the car” – was once more famous than his power to issue a subpoena. Not anymore.

Darrell Issa is the latest of a long, long line of Congressional investigators, politicians who have frequently overplayed their powerful hands. Occasionally and thankfully throughout our history a few investigators have brought real credit to the important role of the Congressional investigation, a Washington institution with a long and checkered past.

The chairman of the Republican National Committee gleefully suggested the other day that Issa will have a busy summer.  “I’ve got a good feeling that Darrell Issa is going to be having quite a summer in reviewing what’s been going on here in the White House as far as this scandal is concerned,” said Reince Priebus and he was only referring to the Congressional review of the IRS scandal. Since Priebus spoke Issa has issued additional subpoenas for more White House records on Benghazi. All signs indicate he has hardly begun.

A Brief History of the Congressional Investigation

What is widely acknowledged to have been the first Congressional investigation took place during the presidency of George Washington in 1792 and centered on an inquiry into a disastrous military expedition led by Major General Arthur St. Clair against native tribes in the then-Northwest Territories. St. Clair lost more than half of his 1,400 man command – a defeat substantially greater than Custer’s at the Little Big Horn – and Congress, trying to understand what happened and why, eventually requested documents and records pertaining to the expedition from Secretary of War Henry Knox. After some days of consideration, Washington ordered Knox, as well as Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, to turn over the documents to Congress.

Feeling its way into the virgin territory of a Congressional investigation of the Executive branch, Congress, much as it still does, moved in fits and starts over the next year. Witnesses were called, reports examined, politics reared its unruly head and eventually in 1793 nothing much happened. General St. Clair was more-or-less vindicated, but he felt his good name had still been damaged badly. It is true that St. Clair, a significant Revolutionary War figure, has largely been forgotten, one of the earliest examples perhaps of the power of Congress to ruin a reputation. In an essay on this very first Congressional investigation, George C. Chalou notes that General St. Clair “emerged neither victor nor victim.” It was not a particularly auspicious beginning.

Every president, including the greatest ones like Jackson and Lincoln, have had to navigate the politics and public relations of the Congressional investigation. The great historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has written that Jackson complained in 1820, while subject of a Congressional investigation, that “he was deprived of the privilege of confronting his accusers, and of interrogating and cross-examining witnesses summoned for his conviction.”

Lincoln’s every executive decision and his strategy as Commander-in-Chief during the Civil War were poured over and second guessed by The Joint Select Committee on the Conduct of the Present War, an all-powerful Congressional committee dominated by Radical Republicans often a odds with Lincoln. Historian Elizabeth Joan Doyle has written about the notorious committee and its imperious chairman Sen. Benjamin Wade of Ohio. “So flagrant were the abuses of the civil rights of the objects of the committee’s wrath (selective vendettas were carried on against a number of military officers) that one can only conclude that in the mid-nineteenth century most of the Republican majority in Congress agreed with Wade and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens that, in wartime, there could be neither a Constitution nor a Bill of Rights.” Ironically most of the members of the Civil War-era Committee on the Conduct of the War were lawyers.

The Congressional investigation, often marked by raw partisanship and fueled by ambitious political players, had fallen into such disrepute in the early 20th Century that the great columnist Walter Lippmann wrote of “that legalized atrocity, the Congressional investigation, in which congressmen, starved of their legitimate food for thought, go on a wild and feverish manhunt, and do not stop at cannibalism.”

Montana Sen. Thomas J. Walsh substantially rehabilitated the image of the Congressional investigation in 1922 with his calm, through and ultimately brilliant investigation into the Teapot Dome scandal. Teapot Dome, along with Watergate in the Nixon-era, is now generally considered to have established the gold standard for one branch of government investigating another. Walsh’s findings sent a Cabinet member, Interior Secretary Albert Fall, to jail and his handling of the investigation was so widely praised, after the fact, that the New York Sun said that the Montana senator was nothing less than a “Statue of Civic Virtue.”

In 1924, Walsh’s Montana colleague Burton K. Wheeler led a headline grabbing investigation that forced Warren Harding’s attorney general, Harry Daugherty, to resign and exposed widespread corruption in the Justice Department. (Daugherty has recently gotten a new lease on life, if you can call it that, as a shady character is the popular television series Boardwalk Empire.) Hard to believe now but both Senate investigations were widely condemned at the time, even by the New York Times, as nothing more than Congressional “poking into political garbage cans.”

One reason the Walsh and Wheeler probes were so powerful, and ultimately so effective, was the completely bi-partisan nature of the investigations. Republicans had the majority in the Senate in the 1920’s, but Democrats Walsh and Wheeler, both lawyers trained at assembling evidence and questioning witnesses, were given authority by GOP chairmen to run the high profile investigations. Imagine such a thing today. I can’t, it’s impossible. Wheeler’s investigation also ultimately played a key role in an important Supreme Court decision of lasting significance – McGrain v. Daugherty – that validated the power of the Congress to compel testimony as a critical component of its Constitutional responsibility to legislate.

Few today would defend the fairness or bi-partisanship of investigations in the 1940’s and 1950’s by the House Un-American Activities Committee or Joseph McCarthy’s reputation ruining, made-for-TV events that eventually claimed the Wisconsin senator as a victim of his own excess. By the same token Harry Truman’s exemplary investigation of the defense industry in the 1940’s shines as a beacon for the way Congress should, but doesn’t always, exercise its awesome responsibility to check and balance the executive.

Here’s what Truman said in 1944. “The power to investigate is one of the most important powers of Congress. The manner in which that power is exercised will largely determine the position and the prestige of the Congress in the future.” Truman was correct. The power to investigate is essential to our system and it can be used for many purposes, to illuminate and legislate or to damage and destroy.

Here’s hoping Darrell Issa has read his history. He might consider just what kind of investigator he wants to be – a Ben Wade or a Harry Truman, conducting a”wild and feverish manhunt” or a sober investigator remembered as a “statue of civic virtue?”

The power and prestige of the Congress are on the line as Mr. Issa heads into his busy summer.

Baseball, Campaign Finance, Egan, Idaho Politics, IRS, Poetry, Politics, Thanksgiving

Following the Money

Posted on by christian

One of the great faults of American journalism – and there seem to be so many in the age of never ending news cycles – is what journalist and tax analyst David Cay Johnston calls the “unfortunate tendency…to quote people accurately without explaining the underlying context.”

The story of the IRS targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny when those groups applied for IRS certification of tax-exempt status is a case in point – a breaking political story without a lot of context. Most reporting, as far as it has gone, has appropriately focused on who did what and why? Google Lindsey Graham/IRS and you’ll find 4,500,000 hits with the latest being the senator’s call for a special prosecutor to probe the “a scandal worse than Watergate.”

What has largely been missing is the origin of the whole brouhaha. Of course the who did what and why must be investigated and, trust me, it will be, but nothing ever happens in a vacuum where politics are concerned. The context of the IRS scandal is enormously important to understanding what has happened. Appropriate for the IRS – it always begins with money.

As former Wall Street insider and one-time Treasury Department counselor Steven Rattner tried to provide a little context recently in the New York Times:

“The decision in 2010 to target groups with certain words in their names did not come out of nowhere. That same year, the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case substantially liberalized rules around political contributions, stimulating the formation of many activist groups.

“In the year ended Sept. 30, 2010, the division received 1,741 applications from ‘social welfare organizations’ requesting tax-exempt status. Two years later, the figure was 2,774. Meanwhile, the staff of the division tasked with reviewing these applications was reduced as part of a series of budget reductions imposed on the I.R.S. by anti-tax forces.

“A far higher proportion of the new applicants wanted to pursue a conservative agenda than a liberal agenda. So without trying to defend the indefensible profiling, it wouldn’t be that shocking if low-level staff members were simply, but stupidly, trying to find an efficient way to sift through the avalanche of applications.”

In other words, thousands of applications for tax-exempt status for “social welfare organizations” inundated the IRS in the two years after five members of the Supreme Court effectively removed most restrictions on money, especially corporate money, in American politics. A bunch of smart political operatives – think Karl Rove and Bill Burton – seized this historic moment in our political history to create an opportunity to make a lot of money for themselves and spend a lot of money in highly partisan ways with all of it carefully hidden from any public disclosure. The one quasi-public step of the process to receive IRS sanction is to apply for an exemption, which as Steve Rattner notes, thousands of groups were doing in the wake of the Citizens United decision. Other groups just began operating without the formal approval apparently confident that they would eventually get the OK. The most well-financed groups like Rove’s Crossroads GPS and Burton’s Priorities USA could afford the kind of legal talent that is steeped in the nuance of IRS rules thereby virtually ensuring that their applications would thread the tax agency needle.

A little more context. Turns out the IRS rarely denies an application for one of these “social welfare” organizations. The Center for Public Integrity looked at all this and concluded that over the last four fiscal years the IRS has denied the applications of just 60 groups, while approving more than 6,800 applications.

Congress has, of course, delegated the rule making for how to assess these groups to the IRS meaning the bureaucrats are left to determine just what constitutes a “social welfare organization.”

Here’s what the agency’s own internal guidance says:

“Whether an organization is ‘primarily engaged’ in promoting social welfare is a ‘facts and circumstances’ determination.

“Relevant factors include the amount of funds received from and devoted to particular activities; other resources used in conducting such activities, such as buildings and equipment; the time devoted to activities (by volunteers as well as employees); the manner in which the organization’s activities are conducted; and the purposes furthered by various activities.”

Rove’s group, just to take one example, spent more than $300 million in the 2012 election cycle on its version of “social welfare” and is already financing campaign-style attack ads against Hillary Clinton; perhaps the earliest such attack in the history of presidential politics.

Writing in The Atlantic long-time Washington policy and politics observer Norm Ornstein nailed it when he said: “The idea that Crossroads GPS, or the American Action Network, or Priorities USA, or a host of other organizations engaged in partisan campaigning on both sides are ‘social welfare organizations’ is nonsense. Bloomberg’s Julie Bykowicz recently pointed to another example to show the farce here. Patriot Majority USA, run by a Democratic operative, told the IRS its mission was ‘to encourage a discussion of economic issues.’ It spent $7.5 million in ads attacking Republican candidates in 2012–and then virtually disappeared, with Bykowicz unable to reach the group by e-mail or phone. ‘Social welfare?'”

Ornstein’s fundamental point is this: “This is all about disclosure of donors, and about political actors trying to find ways to avoid disclosure.” Bingo.

In Idaho the ultra-conservative Idaho Freedom Foundation, which has never even hinted at the source of most of its money, operates under another section of federal tax law – section 501(c)(3) – and finances a “news service” that generally serves to reinforce the group’s libertarian political agenda, which most recently has been focused on lobbying to keep Idaho from establishing a health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – and publicizing the objections of the group’s executive director to the state’s traffic enforcement mechanism. In order to be exempt under section 501(c)(3) a group must be deemed to be a “public charity” or a “private foundation.”

In Idaho most hospitals are public charities so are many educational foundations and arts and humanities groups, but so too is the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which has become one of the most powerful political forces in the state. It must be noted that IFF received its IRS designation before Citizens United started the avalanche of secret political money flowing to tax code empowered outfits like Rove’s, but still the Idaho group most recent tax return says it collected more than $350,000 in grants and contributions in 2011 to further its “public charity” work.

The real point here is that the IRS code is a confused, often contradictory hodge-podge of rules and dodges. Citizens United further confused the already messy landscape and spawned an entirely new industry where vast amounts of unregulated, unreported money is being used to influence public policy and elections. Money and politics going together is as old as eggs with bacon, but this new political world, illustrated anew by the IRS “scandal,” has perverted the one standard that has a chance of keeping our politics remotely clean and transparent. That standard is disclosure. Perhaps the months of investigation into who did what and why at the IRS will help Congress and the American voter see just who is hell bent on using secret money, with the help of the tax code, to increasingly dominate politics.

If it turns out the IRS willfully targeted certain groups, while not looking closely at others, then heads must roll. But if instead it turns out, as seems entirely possible, that the extra “scrutiny” was based on a fumbling bureaucratic response to a incredibly flawed system then Congress should set about to fix that problem.

As Salon’s David Dayen notes, “It’s pretty simple, then, to figure out what took place. The IRS, faced with the enormous task of dealing with a surge of 501(c)(4) groups taking advantage of an often contradictory law, performed triage by taking the path of least resistance – going after the most obvious targets, who didn’t have the resources to artfully stay within the tax laws, or to fight back against invasive reviews. They shied away from the heavily lawyered-up big-money groups, and instead focused on battles they thought they could win.”

There’s some additional context for you.