Sullivan Begins To Turn On Obama

Andrew Sullivan thinks outloud about the “hubris of Obama:”

A few things have unsettled me these past couple of weeks about the Obama campaign. It is not the small adjustments to previously-held positions - FISA, the Second Amendment, Iraq. It’s a sense that Obama’s ample self-regard is lapsing into hubris. The signs of this are pretty trivial on the surface, but they are troubling nonetheless.

I can undestand calling Obama’s recent statements on the 2nd Amendment and Iraq “small adjustments.”  But it’s a big understatement to call Obama’s switch on FISA a “small adjustment;” it wasn’t a small adjustment, it was a significant departure from a previously held position.  I understand the political reasons for doing so.  But, let’s call it what it is.  The discussion shouldn’t be about whether it was a major departure from a previously held position.  Rather, the debate should be whether or not the political gains are worth the cost.

Sullivan goes on to criticize Obama for the Obama seal (which the campaign dropped fast), moving his convention speech outside and for allowing his daughters to be interviewed.  He concludes:

Any one of these misjudgments would be a trivial lapse - and we all make mistakes. It’s the combination that concerns me - and the possibility that this campaign is becoming far too cocky for its own good.

I point this out for a few reasons:

• First, we have been saying for some time that Obama runs the risk of alienating supporters with some of his campaign tactics (see our most receent podcast for a thorough discussion).
• Second, if a die-hard supporter like Sullivan is already becomming irritated with Obama, I wonder how widespread that sentiment is amongst Obama supporters.  I don’t think that this sentiment is widespread, bu I do think (as I have been saying for a few weeks) that it has the potential to, unless some adjustments are made.
• Third, it’s yet another reason to support the conention that Andrew Sullivan is completely overrated.  He is too often either dead wrong or overstates a case so much that he has to constantly reverse himself down the road.  Although, it usually takes Sullivan a bit longer than a few weeks to realize how wrong he was.  I guess now that Hillary’s out the race, Sullivan’s blind support for Obama just doesn’t give him the same thrill anymore.

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The Case That Divided Government is Irrelevant

One of the rationales brought up by people this election season for voting for John McCain is that with Democrats in control of Congress and the White House, this would create a problematic scenario. I think this idea is mostly ridiculous.

Michael Merritt lays out what he considers unified government:

What is unified government? I define this as the executive and legislative branches being controlled by the same party. In Congress, it means that both the House and Senate have comfortable enough margins of power to get their agenda passed swiftly without too much work.

I disagree with this characterization. One party has total control only if they have 60 members of the Senate, one reasons liberals are going crazy over that number this year. This is exceptionally unlikely to happen this year. Nate Silver projects that there is only about a 17% chance of that happening given the electorate.

Republicans did also not have 60 members in the Senate. So what happened? All of the partisan elements of Bush’s domestic agenda the past six years were either thwarted (Social Security) or co-opted by Democrats for various reasons (Tax Cuts, Energy Bill, FISA). The less partisan bills (No Child Left Behind, post-Katrina Bills) were in many cases co-authored by Democrats. There are other bills, such as the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act and the Medicare Bill that fit into both categories to a certain extent. None of these depended on who held a majority in Congress; if Democrats had a slim lead on Republicans, much of the same would happen. The FISA Compromise in the Senate right now is indicatibe of that. The immediate effect of a new President in domestic policy is regulatory power; ability to set new standards, to appoint partisans to regulatory commissions, and whatnot. That is usually unhindered by Congress, except in extreme cases. This was similar for the Clinton administration: the partisan health care attempt failed, even with a majority of Democrats.

Moreover, in terms of foriegn policy, the development the past 50 years has strongly favored the President over Congress. Indeed, Bush has been able to do almost whatever he wanted in foreign policy, even after the Democrats took back Congress in 2006. Bill Clinton initiated the Kosovo campaign in the middle of being impeached.

The ultimate point is that in domestic policy, divided government is overrated. If one party has a supermajority, than they can accomplish very partisan things, such as what Democrats did in the early 60s. But there is little evidence that slight majorities change things dramatically either.

Merritt lays out other reasons.

1) Corruption

So why is having unified government so bad? Well, for starters, it leads to all sorts of corruption. You only need to look at the Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay and Mark Foley scandals to see what can happen when politicians get too comfortable with their own power. … As well as scandals in Congress, scandals in the executive branch can also go unchecked with unified government. Just look at the U.S. Attorney scandal, treatment of enemy combatants, and others.

Corruption is a worry not for divided government, but for parties that have any power whatsoever. As appealing as it would be if no party had power, that seems unrealistic. Moreover, it’s not just Republicans that have a monopoly on corruption; Democrats like William Jefferson are not squeaky clean, either.

As for Merritt’s second argument, Democrats have done absolutely nothing constructive regarding those scandals that they could not have done in the minority. Issuing unanswered subpoenas for instance. At best, you could argue that Democratic pressure made Alberto Gonzalez resign. But not even Republicans were not happy with him at the hearings.

2) Breakdown of Checks and Balances:

Merritt states:

Next, and arguably the worst, unified government creates a system where checks and balances break down, and the legislative and executive branches begin to take the country in too far of the wrong direction. Whether it’s more toward socialism or more toward laisse-faire capitalism doesn’t matter. When government is unified, the debate necessary to quash bad legislation just isn’t there, and the executive and party in control of the legislature can enact whatever they want without too much effort. Keep in mind that I speak of the kind of unified government that some commenters here are afraid of. That which has a large majority in the House (which the Democrats don’t quite have now but come close) and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate (which the Democrats don’t have now and probably won’t have even after this November).

As I noted above, the facts do not back this up; not at all. This type of strong push one way or another only occurs when one party has a supermajority, implicitly meaning that the people want the country to move in that direction. The reason is simple; the founding fathers created a system in the Senate that would check undivided government itself. Merritt completely glosses over this; he admits it exists, but does not want to trust it.

Less Partisanship:

At least with divided government, both sides are forced to compromise, at least in theory. This is in theory because it depends on how partisan minded your two parties are. If you get even one party that is unwilling to concede anything, then nothing gets done, as has often been the case with the current make-up of Congress. Yet, the partisanship we’ve seen isn’t so bad that we see no legislation come out of it. The Farm bill is just one example of where both parties got together to pass legislation.

This is also true when the same party is in control of Congress and the White House. I’ll take the Farm Bill and raise him every other bill I’ve mentioned: Tax Cuts, Energy Bill, Katrina Bills, No Child Left Behind, Medicare, etc. Even the poorly organized Democrats were able to negotiate somewhat with those. Moreover, even with undivided government, when negotiation failed, bills did not pass (Social Security).

Furthermore, I think the Farm Bill is a terrible example. Farm issues and immigration are two specific issues that naturally cut across both party lines. Support and Dissent on the bills is never aligned specifically by party. You find liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans agreeing to hate the Farm Bill, for instance. Somehow, I don’t think that what Merritt had in mind was that bipartisanship would emerge as a cabal of bipartisan representatives agreed to take money for their states.

There surely is some impact of divided government at the very margins. But that difference is dwarfed by the foreign policy differences between the candidates, even as their Iraq policies converge. It’s for that reason that I’ve defined myself as a foreign policy voter; if you want to effect a domestic policy, work and donate to Congress. For this Presidential election, too much is on the line in foreign policy to base a vote on marginal impacts of a divided government.

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Partisan Hacks: Rachel Maddow ‘Would Bet’ That McCain Chooses Jeb Bush As VP

Appearing on yesterday’s Race For The White House on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow discussed the likelihood of John McCain choosing Jeb Bush as his running mate.  She stated:

Joe Scarborough: Rachel, you know, George W. Bush is like kryptonite to Republicans this year.  But, is Jeb Bush, the good Bush to be standing next to in 2008?

Rachel Maddow: Well, Floridians like Jeb Bush and it seems like John McCain likes Jeb Bush.  I mean everything you hear, I don’t know either of the candidates personally, right - I’m not an insider person who is getting that sort of information.  But, the people who are close the candidates, when they talk about who John McCain personally likes, who he has good chemistry with, they talk about Jeb Bush.  I think that when you hear McCain sort of bring up Jeb Bush unprompted in conversation, when you see Jeb Bush make this detour in Mexico City to go see McCain today - I think they’re testing just how important Jeb Bush’s last name is.  Because, if he had a different last name, I think there’s no question he would be right at the top of the list for McCain.

Scarborough: …But Rachel, you’re not saying that McCain could possibly pick Jeb Bush as his vice president, are you?

Maddow: If I had to bet, and I don’t bet, but if I had to bet today I would bet on Jeb Bush.  I honestly would.

It’s worth noting that last summer, Maddow put forth a conspiracy theory, which involved Cheney resigning for medical reasons and being replaced with Jeb Bush, who could then run for president as an incumbent VP.  Onto, yesterday’s comment…

To begin, the mere suggestion that McCain would choose Jeb Bush as his running mate is unbelievably silly.  I don’t care what side of the aisle you are on, if you’re on television you shouldn’t say things this absurd.  But, to Maddow’s credit, she did warn everyone how willfully ignorant she was.  After all, she acknowledged that she wasn’t an insider and has no specific information to support her senseless contention.  However, if you break down her analysis, it’s pretty obvious that she was solely saying it for political reasons, since, the more you tie McCain to Bush (either directly or indirectly, the better for the Democrats)…

She does provide a reason for her conclusion though: McCain is testing Jeb’s last name by meeting with him in Mexico City.  I’m not entirely sure how a meeting that took place in Mexico City with significantly less coverage than it would have gotten back in the US somehow satisfies or signifies testing Jeb’s name.  It actually doesn’t make sense.  But, that’s okay, because it doesn’t need to.  It only needs to link Bush and McCain.

It’s a shame when people, like Maddow, who spend so much time complaining about partisan hacks neglect to realize just what a hack they’ve become themselves.  In my opinion, anyone that prefaces a statement with something to the effect of ‘I have no idea what I am talking about, but…’ should not be allowed to finish that thought on a televised news program.  I guess I’m just reaching for the stars though…

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Bloggers Gone Wild, Stop Paying Attention…

I realize that this isn’t terribly important, but I feel that it’s worth mentioning because it is indicative of the frenzy taking place on the internet lately vis-a-vis Clinton/Obama and serves as a reminder to all to be wary of what you read.

Eric from TPM (an overall great source) posted the audio for a Clinton campaign policy call that was held earlier today.  The call was a policy only call and was intended to discuss the unveiling of Clinton’s breast cancer policy; it’s pretty clear that this was not the frequently held strategy call.  Despite this, Eric makes a largely unsupported inference, writing:

The daily Clinton campaign conference call, usually consisting of the daily slam against Obama followed by a freewheeling Q and A, took an unusual form this morning.

Instead, the call was purely about policy, focusing exclusively on questions about Hillary’s new initiative on breast-cancer awareness — perhaps because the campaign is determined not to have to answer any more questions about Mark Penn’s departure.

As someone that sits in on these calls and has been recording them with regularity before it became the hip thing to do, I take umbrage with the unbelievably inaccuracy in Eric’s post.  This isn’t the first policy call that the Clinton campaign has held.  Today’s policy call was very similar in format and tone to previous policy calls.  Granted, the fact that the campaign didn’t have its typical call to discuss the state of the race, is certainly worth noting.  But, the suggestion that things were radically different on today’s call because of Penn’s resignation is just completely baseless.  Moreover, it generates confusion amongst readers/listeners, by glossing over distinctions that would otherwise be relevant.  Yes, the Clinton campaign failed to hold its state of the race call today to avoid questions about Penn.  But, no, today’s call is not something completely out of place.  Unfortunately, even good sources like Donklephant in a frenetic attempt to keep up with the pace of coverage neglected to analyze TPM’s conclusion and consequently reiterated a completely false suggestion.

I am truly beginning to wonder just how many people are paying attention anymore.  I recognize the perils of blogging and the strong desire to keep up with the pack.  But, it’s also worth noting that truly good content takes hours of research and fact checking (JW’s backgrounder on Penn’s history is a good example of the kind of blogging that needs to occur more frequently).

Anyway, I just wanted to clear up the confusion created by TPM.  As a side note, you can listen to all of the campaign conference calls and read the accompanying press release for context at 2008Central.net [LINK].

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Harwood To Candidates: Stop Whining About Press

In an open memo to presidential candidates, John Harwood tells them to stop whining about the press:

One of the familiar themes of modern day politics is whining about the role of the press. Losing candidates often resort to this as an explanation for their lagging performance.

We’ve heard it plenty from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which says the press has been too hard on her and too easy on Barack Obama. We heard it from Obama–after he lost Ohio and Texas to Clinton. We’ve heard it from various of John McCain’s rivals, who say he benefits from a friendly press corps. We heard it from obscure candidates in both parties, who say if only the press paid attention they’d go better at the polls.
Well, guess what? The twists and turns of this campaign have gone a long way toward debunking all that whining.

For the most part, his memo is fine, albeit a bit oversimplified. However, I can accept his underlying premise. Then he went and took a massive leap by concluding:

The lesson of all this: we in the press cover the events of the campaign, we don’t create them.

Sure, I certainly think Read more

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Chris Matthews: Limbaugh Will Let Hillary Clinton Win So He Can Be “Government In Exile”

In an exchange with Howard Fineman and Michelle Bernard on today’s Hardball, Chris Matthews suggested that Limbaugh would let Hillary Clinton win in order to become the government in exile:

Howard Fineman: McCain is relying on the idea that if he does get the nomination, the prospect of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will be enough to unite the conservatives. I don’t necessarily think that’s the case. Sometimes conservative activists get in a mood where they prefer to loose…

Chris Matthews: Right.

Fineman: …They prefer to lose…

Matthews: Yes! Yes!

Fineman: …They want to Lose. They love to lose.

Matthews: I just think that’s so true. Michelle, I think these guys like Rush Limbaugh, who I think is a great professional at what he does, would love to be the government in exile, have a democrat like Hillary Clinton, especially Hillary Clinton as president. And he would be in heaven for four years, putting her in hell.

Michelle Bernard: No one is going to unify the Republican party more than Hillary Clinton, you know. Let’s make that clear. I’ve got to actually agree with…

Matthews: No, I mean let her win the presidency, so that guys on radio can dance for four years on her grave. I mean, they’ll just love it.

This is multidimensional nonsense. It’s pretty clear that for the safety of others, going forward, MSNBC should only allow Matthews to use NERF on Hardball.

For context, in the subsequent segment, Matthews reads a letter from former Speaker Tip O’Neil’s daughter that praises Barack Obama and states that Tip would support Obama if he were alive. Matthews goes on to talk about the cut of Obama’s jib.

*sigh*

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Stop Listening To Andrew Sullivan, Part 2 of Many…

As I already discussed, this post is part of an ongoing series urging caution for readers of Andrew Sullivan (under the larger topic of our “Defenestration of blogs”). Yesterday evening, I sent Andrew an email responding to a specific post of his, but more generally, I was simply requesting a higher level of discourse with regard to his election coverage [full email after the jump].

However, something Andrew wrote today underscores the inconsistency in his appeals from the past months; he pleads:

McCain represents a chance to remake the GOP on reformist lines, just as Obama represents a chance for the Democrats to escape the sleaze and cynicism of the Clintons. Maybe the Republicans, unlike, it appears, the Democrats, have the courage to choose the future over the past, to break a dynasty rather than entrench one. I sure hope they do.

For months, Andrew has argued against the current state of politics. He has urged his readers to transcend the vitriol of the past 15 year or so years…to rise above their own emotional investments in a particular candidate or issue…to demand more of their politicians and leaders…

In and of themselves, these are all very valid appeals. However, what good are they, when the very person urging them fails to demonstrate these principles in action? Perhaps on other topics, Andrew provides reasoned discourse. But, when it comes to discussing the 2008 election and specifically some of the personalities in the election, he does nothing but add to the divisiveness. While reciting his own vitriol, his calls to transcend the status quo are tantamount to those people on group emails who hit “reply to all” in order to complain about being on the email…he’s just enhancing the problem that he properly recognizes.

I’m not necessarily arguing for or against the specific positions that Sullivan advocates. What I am arguing against is the inconsistency between his message/appeal and his rhetoric. Yes, we need to demand more from our politicians…it’s true. But, we also need to demand more from the people that are tasked with informing us and from those who shape the national dialogue. If we’re really going to transcend the bitterness of the past/present, then we’re either going to need to start looking for new voices in the media, demand more from the present ones or some combination of the two.

My point, can very simply be boiled down to: practice what you preach.

I really don’t think it’s impossible for Americans to have a higher level of discourse and by this I mean more substantive and less personally divisive. Perhaps, this is because I truly do not believe that America is as absurd as those in the mainstream media would suggest. However, since they’re the ones shaping the conversation…they’re also the ones partly responsible for dragging it down. Indeed Andrew (and others), demand more…but first…start with yourself.

And my email from yesterday: Read more

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Stop Listening To Andrew Sullivan, Part 1 of Many…

From now on, every time Andrew Sullivan posts something about the 2008 election that’s just absurd, I will post a reminder to refrain from listening to him.

His most recent anti-Clinton drivel (and I am certainly not a Clinton apologist) boils down to the following: There’s a poll that shows Obama doing better in a general election against Giuliani or Huckabee than Clinton, therefore “the argument seems to be over.  On the basis of electability…”

Quite honestly, I’m really stunned at the sweeping overstatements and gross oversimplification that Andrew consistently applies to his calculus when assessing the political race.  Indeed, there are some very good arguments as to why Obama may be (and is probably) more electable than Sen. Clinton, but a poll about the general election right now definitely is not one of them.

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Defenestration Of Blogs: GreenMountainPolitics (aka: Monday Morning Clacker)

It’s been a while since my last defenestration, but the time has come. Read more

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Defenestration of Blogs: Iowa Edition

This isn’t a defenestration, but rather a shout out to some great blogging done over the past few days. There were a lot of candidates in Iowa the past few days - and a lot of blogs in Iowa attended and wrote about them.

Here’s some of our favorites:

Ipol attended the Des Moines Clinton event on Tuesday night, and even has some video up of the event. Twelve minutes worth, in fact. Great stuff, and great commentary as well.

The Political Realm attended the Clear Lake parade in which the Clintons and Romney marched.

Century of the Common Iowan actually went to three separate events and blogged candidates speeches! Big props for that. Specifically, there are liveblogs up of Obama in Oskaloosa, Dodd in Pleasantville, and Biden in Des Moines.

A Year In Iowa has an interesting anecdote about the Clintons specifically, and voters in Iowa as well.

Cyclone Conservatives attended the Iowa Presidential Forum and Ron Paul rally, as well as Tancredo’s office opening in Ames.

Essential Estrogen saw Biden Tuesday morning in Cedar Rapids.

I realize this is skewed towards Democrats, please forward any interesting blog links of Iowans talking about seeing any Republicans if you know of any. Or leave a comment, and I will update the post. Or, really, any additional interesting first hand perspectives from the man on the street.

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Obama Talks Substance in New Hampshire

Obama was in New Hampshire, and talked substance. Regarding health care, a detailed plan will not be unveiled for another month or two. The Boston Globe reported:

Obama planned a smaller event Tuesday in Portsmouth focused on health care. However, Obama said details of his plan to achieve universal health care by the end of his first term won’t be released for another month or two.

Even then, Obama said he would be open to changing it later. “I don’t claim to have a monopoly on all the good ideas,” he said. “If someone else has a better idea of how to do it cheaper, I’ll adopt that.”

In general terms, Obama said he would lower health-care costs by focusing more on disease prevention and management of chronic illnesses and modernizing medical record-keeping. That would free up money that could be used to subsidize those who lack insurance and allow them to buy into a pool, he said. In answering another question, he didn’t rule out paying for it by rolling back the tax cuts for the most wealthy taxpayers.

Obama is still behind the others, but his choice to adopt good plans of others is a wiser one than many pundits will let on. It shows him as a leader who is willing to look for better ideas and adopt what works. What he’ll need to do to complement this is stress the political will to get the changes made. And if Obama starts saying the same thing on every issue, his message will be lost and he’ll not stand for anything. But Americans for the most part don’t see big differences between the plans, of, say Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.

Obama used his conditional support of public financing as a means of distinguishing himself from the big money candidates, saying “The fact that I’m raising obscene amounts of money for this presidential race doesn’t make me a hypocrite. … I want to see those systems implemented and have a track record of doing it.”

Regarding Iraq, Obama touted his speech made in the Illinois state legislature 5 months before the war, saying “I recommend the speech not so much so I can say ‘I told you so,’ so much as to get a sense of the judgment I bring to bear on foreign policy issues, because I anticipated most of the problems, if not all the problems we’ve confronted since we got there.”

He further stated that after Bush vetoes the bill just passed in Congress which imposes non-binding deadlines for withdrawal, that negotiations will have to continue. He says “When he vetoes that bill, we are going to have to go back and say what are the other ways we can ratchet up the pressure on the president. … There are a whole range of options. We could say, ‘OK, we’re going to fund the war in three-month increments and keep you on a shorter leash’, or ‘we’re going to try to constrain you and let you veto the bill again.‘”

Obama, though, is pulling any implied threats not to fund the troops off the table. Shrewdly, Obama may have managed to sell himself to the middle at the expense of the bloggers who are already being paid big bucks by Hillary - despite Obama by any objective measure being more liberal than Clinton. The long term problem for Obama is that he simply cannot continue to alienate the left, who would be his big fundraiser. The good news for Obama is that the left has badly misconstrued his position - he didn’t ’surrender’ to Bush, nor did Congress. He’s just negotiating over what Congress can actually do. Even threatening to pull funds would be disastrous for Democratic candidates. Obama and Congress are trying to restrict Bush without being preceived as using the troops; it’s that sort of maneuvering that will convince the middle they are capable of holding the White House, not being so radical that they bluff pulling funding. Any call to remove funding for troops would be a horrible bluff that the White House and America would not like. As Obama states in the orginal article, and in the previous paragraph explicitly, they’re still negotiating.

Does anyone but (parts of) the liberal blogosphere and Kucinich think that threatening to pull funds (or actually doing it) is a good idea politically?

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Defenestration Of Blogs

Presenting 2008 Central’s first Defenestration of Blogs, where we point out some issues with fellow bloggers…

• Bonus points to Boi From Troy for blogging about Sen. Clinton’s speech to the HRC. Shame for misusing a conveniently cropped picture, not from the event, which makes it seem as though Sen. Clinton is standing in front of a giant “Lesbian” sign. The picture is actually pretty funny and it’s certainly important to keep humor in politics, but, if you’re going to discuss an event in a serious way then either: a) use a picture from the event or b) make a joke about the picture so readers know it’s not from the event.
• I enjoy his site, but must grudgingly say shame to Joshing Politics for suggesting that Sen. Brownback was guilty of “possible sexual harassment” against Sen. Klobuchar for what appears to be nothing more than humorous conversation (albeit a bit on the saucy side). He did not treat this story fairly.
• Tsk, Tsk to ItsAPundit for using an opportunity to denounce Coulter’s ‘Edwards Faggot’ insult to instead support Coulter and remind people why she’s better than Giuliani. Is it not possible to be both against Giuliani and against Coulter’s use of the word faggot?
• Enormous shame to Jenn of the Jungle for referring to Sen. Obama as “Obama Bin Barack.” It’s important to criticize candidates, but how is this even remotely close to sensible political discussion?
• Shame on a lot of bloggers (liberal and conservatives), including 2008 Central, for not giving Tom Tancredo the necessary kudos for driving a hybrid and/or how he handled the news about a staffer “borrowing” it without permission and crashing it into another car; bonus points to The Hill (even though they kind of shafted us on the McCain google adwords story):

The congressman was asked if he had authorized the young staffer to take his car.
Um, no, Tancredo responded. Why?
Because he’d just driven it into another car.
Suffice it to say the young man no longer works for Tancredo. But what was he doing with the car?
“I don’t know,” Tancredo responded. “I guess he needed a ride home.”

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