Immigration reform: Learning from Utah

Progressives: You can learn from Utah. Really.

Re-posting from my recent piece at _The Hill_.

Critics on both the left and the right are dismissing President Obama’s recent call for immigration reform, saying he offered nothing new. However, his El Paso speech on Tuesday, and recent events in some states gave hints of a possible winning strategy. Ironically, Obama may claim victory if conservative groups are at the forefront of the change—but reformers will have to scale back their ambitions to make it happen.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/campaign/161445-immigration-reform-from-distrust-to-direction

Baghdad Goodbye

Today the last American combat troops left Iraq, nearly 7.5 years after Bush/Cheney launched this military fiasco. There is no measure of this war that makes anything other than an unalloyed disaster with few parallels in American history - not the number of deaths and injuries, the $2 trillion spent on it, nor the way it has weakened the American position in the region and the world.

The Obama Administration deserves - and will surely not get - a great deal of credit for fulfilling this campaign promise. After all, even as Obama may be sinking us deeper in Afghani quicksand, he resisted calls to abandon his original timeline in Iraq.

Violence has subsided in Iraq and a measure of stability has returned, but in fact the country remains a basket case and will be that way for some time. The troop escalation - the so-called "surge" - led by Gen. David Petreaus (to whom George Bush more or less abdicated his role as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces in 2007) deserves some credit for this.

But the surge was always intended to create enough safe space for the Iraqis to come up with a long-term political resolution to the civil war of 2004-07. That, clearly, has not yet happened. Politics has ground to a halt in Iraq months now after the elections. There is still no real government now in Baghdad, and none on the horizon.

Some while ago I suggested the right analogy for the Iraq war was not Vietnam, but Cambodia. There, after the United States contributed to the destablization of the country, the country descended into a fratricidal, genocidal civil war, brought to an end - ironies of ironies - when the Vietnamese invaded and restored some order.

American combat troops are not necessary for whatever may happen in Iraq going forward and it is long past time for them to come home. Let's hope Obama is demonstrates similar resolution with his timetable to get American troops out of Afghanistan.

Take a Deep Breath

The Obama Presidency has failed.

14 months into it, that's the only conclusion you would draw based on the way the press has reported it. And I'm not talking about the vast right-wing noise apparatus. Listen to NPR or pick up any issue of the NY Times, and that's what they're reporting. The latest exhibit in this litany of doomsaying is yesterday's (Sunday) Times Magazine whose cover story is about the failure of Rahm Emmanuel to get anything done. (The Times, for its part, still cowers in fear from being slapped around by Dick Cheney for 8 years. I think they've changed their famous motto on the banner to read: "All the news we're not scared to print." )

But even given the cravenness of the mainstream press, someone ought to mention that this story line of failure and inaction is simply wrong. Obama passed an enormous stimulus bill, whose effects are now beginning to be felt (out here in Ohio we may even get passenger rail service because of it!); he has in fact ramped down the war in Iraq even as he has ramped up the war in Afghanistan, both exactly what he campaigned to do; he has signed a number of important Executive Orders which would have gotten my attention if not for the other larger issues. (I'll mention only that he did away with Bush Administration restrictions on stem cell research).

How soon we forget! And now there is serious movement on a financial reform bill, a real chance of fundamental change in the student loan system (those of us involved in higher ed ought to be cheering loudly about this one), and last week Obama launched an effort to re-write No Child Left Behind, which comes up for re-authorization this spring.

Oh yeah, and health insurance reform. Obama is right that we have never been as close as we are right now to getting a health insurance reform bill - never.

There are plenty of reasons to complain about the particulars of any of these. I certainly don't think the financial reform bill, as it currently stands, goes far enough, nor do I have any enthusiasm for the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. But a year into this administration and the economic arrows are starting, tentatively to point in the right direction and even the Pakistanis are now arresting terrorists.

Failure and inaction?

And while we're at it, let's put this in some historical context: no American president, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, inherited as many messes as Obama has. The economy may well have been worse in 1933 when FDR took office, but he had few foreign policy issues to worry about (he didn't pay much attention to Europe for several years), much less two bungled and mis-managed wars; Vietnam was certainly a larger mess than Iraq in 1968 but the economy was still humming when Nixon took office. While we're at, for another point of comparison, George Bush II inherited a balanced budget, a budget surplus and a nation at peace. Heckuva job Georgie.

And remember too that when Abraham Lincoln took office the entire Southern congressional delegation left - Obama has accomplished what he has in the face of the most vicious, partisan and obstructionist opposition in American history.

The Times may well be hopelessly craven, but why are the rest of walking around with such a feeling of dread, convinced that a collection of aging white tea-partiers and Palin-ites will take over Washington in November? Let's all take a deep breath, realize how far we've come in the past year, and put the gloves back on. We should all be relishing the opportunity to take on the Party of No and hold them accountable for holding the nation back.

Does the Treasury Department need a Rustbelt Intellectual?

The demands of the new quarter require this post to be brief, but I wanted to highlight what I think are some interesting and important dilemmas faced by the Obama administration in the current economic crisis.   

Two main observations:  1)  America appears to be experiencing the first significant wave of economic populism in many decades; 2)  Obama's Treasury Department policymakers and staff of economic advisers appear to be unaware of this or to understand what it means (see Tom's post of February 10).  

A series of Frank Rich columns in the New York Times over the past several weeks brilliantly exposed this political blindness or insensitivity.  And the Times is still hammering home the basic point--a story from yesterday showed the troubling ties that Lawrence Summers (never known for his political acumen) has to hedge funds. 

Watching the political missteps leads me to believe that the Obama administration needs a Rustbelt Intellectual at Treasury or on the staff of economic advisers.  I use that term to refer to the spirit of this blog's many posts and reader comments--as a shorthand to mean only that the administration economic policy needs a voice from someone---anyone--who can truly empathize with the common American, with the working and middle classes.  

Yet the story on Summers indicates the difficulties that Obama faces in balancing politics and policy.  How can we reconcile the interests and concerns of the common American with the arcane world of 21st-century finance?  

Given the highly technical nature of our current financial crisis, does Obama have any other choice than to hand over the keys to the policymaking to folks who presided over and arguably contributed to the crash?  Would providing a seat at the table for a spokesperson for the middle and working classes simply put that person in over their head?  Are the concerns of working families hopelessly naive and likely to worsen the crisis if made a driving force in policy?  In other words, would a Rustbelt Intellectual just mess everything up?  

In the short term, it appears that handing economic policy over to technocrats is politically risky.  In the long term, it may be our only option:  Americans may just have to hold their noses and hope the Wall Street tycoons both in the Obama administration and on Wall Street can save the nation. 

A Boy Doing a Man's Job?

72 hours into the Obama Administration and two things are already clear:

1) The remaining Congressional Republicans really are the true-believing, kool-aid drinking partisan zealots we thought they were. Their actions in this short legislative week suggest that they would burn the village rather than save it. Holding up cabinet nominees, rattling sabers about legislation that hasn't even arrived yet. These are ugly people who plan to play even uglier.

2) In the Senate, where because of byzantine rules the few can hold up the will of the many, Harry Reid is not up to the task of leading Obama's agenda past Mitch McConnell and the drooling dogs in his party.

I have never been particularly impressed with Reid. He deserves some credit for taking over the Democratic Senatorial leadership at a low-water mark. But since becoming Majority leader in 2007 he has struck me as not having much of a vision, nor the political skills to turn that vision into successful legislation. Even with a majority, Reid couldn't stop most of Bush's agenda, though at that point there was nothing to be gained in cooperating with the president.

Shortly after the November election, I thought I heard a rumor that someone else might run against him for Majority leader. Either that rumor was simply blogosphere vapor, or Democrats decided that a fight over Reid was not worth having. Whatever the case, the future of Obama's agenda now rests in the hands of Harry Reid.

Unless I'm missing something here, this does not fill me with confidence. Obama will have a long honeymoon period with the public and the press I suspect, but it is clear that all his bipartisan gesturing will amount to very little with Congressional Republicans for whom "bipartisanship" is even more anathema than "gay marriage" or "Darwinian evolution."

Which makes it even more urgent that those of us who helped put Obama in the White House now turn our energy to lobbying those Republicans who stand in the way of making this a better country.

Reid is no Lyndon Johnson, who bent the Senate to his will with astonishing effectiveness. But unless he can begin to channel his inner LBJ, this brand new day we all felt on Tuesday may cloud over very quickly.