Almost Somewhat Accurate


The Atlantic's Kevin Drum and The New York Times' Paul Krugman are annoyed at Mitt Romney for claiming at the Sioux Falls GOP debate

is a president who fundamentally believes that this next century is the post-American century. Perhaps it's going to be the Chinese century. He is wrong.

Krugman terms "justified outrage" Drum's remark "where does he get this stuff? It's just made up out of thin air. Obama's never said this or anything even close to it." He himself adds "I can’t think of any candidate who has lied so freely, with so little compunction," obviously "playing into right-wing fantasies (of) what a liberal sound like."

Romney does lie rather freely, although with a campaign that includes Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, Krugman really should think a little harder. Additionally, there is Newt Gingrich, whose discomfort with the truth is discomfiting to many of us, and who plays into right-wing fantasies of what a liberal sounds like. There was the time in 1999 he blamed the evil liberal triumvirate of media, university, and politicians for the Columbine horror, accusing "the elite of this country – the elite news media, the liberal the academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton.... of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don’t have the courage to look at the world you have created.” Or in November, 2000, exploiting the horror of violent crime by remarking "I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things.... the only way you get change is to vote Republican." Or last year, appealing to fear of the other by contending "the folks who want to build this (not quite at Ground Zero, not an actual mosque) mosque-- who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists-- those folks don't have any interest in reaching out to the community."

Compared to Gingrich, Romney is a piker when playing into right-wing fantasies- and occasionally, perhaps accidentally, he gets it right, such as when he recently charged President Obama with being

someone who is now so desperate to get reelection that he’s doing things that are very much counter to the interest of the country and he knows it.

There are many examples- e.g.,, withdrawing the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel and bypassing Elizabeth Warren for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau- of President Obama subordinating principle to politics. More recently, however, Obama's Health and Human Services Secretary, the pro-choice Kathleen Sebelius, rejected the FDA's recommendation that Plan B be made available to girls under the age of 17, the first time HHS has rejected the FDA's position. Responding to a query posed at a news conference, Obama supported the decision, leading Amanda Marcotte to argue

Turns out a lot of people---especially men---who think of themselves as "reasonable" or moderate or even liberal, quickly glommed on to the argument that this ruling was addressing a parent's right to know. They falsely assumed that putting Plan B out of reach of teenagers will force teenagers to talk to their parents, and didn't consider that for many to most teenagers who were already not talking to parents, it will actually cause them to shut up about it and hope that they just don't get pregnant.

And take the payroll tax cut, a politically popular position, as with almost all tax cuts, and which has been used by the President as a cudgel to bash Republicans. Currently, as worked by President Obama, general revenue is compensating the Social Security trust fund for the loss in revenue to Social Security incurred by the payroll tax cut, as it presumably would by any extension. But redistricting prompted by the 2010 census is accruing to the benefit of the GOP, which controls state governments, and which is the stronger party in most of the states gaining congressional seat(s) due to population shifts. (If the new congressional map were in effect in 2008, John McCain would have won more than 270 electoral votes and the presidency.) In November 2012, Republicans will be defending 10 seats- and Democrats, 23. Barack Obama's re-election is in jeopardy.

And so it might be as early as January, 2013 that the Republican Party controls the federal government. The payroll tax cut, of course, would continue under the control of the GOP, which currently is opposed for leverage and/or because it is Barack Obama's idea, reasons completely unrelated to ideology. And the GOP will continue to reimburse the trust fund? Not on your life. The idea of either increasing fees or taxes to supplement Social Security or blowing a bigger hold in the deficit will be off the table, especiallly when the GOP will have an opportunity to bleed the trust fund, thereby enhancing its (fictitious) claim that Social Security isn't solvent, and strengthen its argument that it must be "reformed"- i.e., privatized.

Barack Obama isn't the smartest person in Washington- that would be Mitch McConnell, and Haley Barbour, when he's around. But he sees the end game as very few in his party do. When Mitt Romney says that the President is "so desperate to get reelection that he's doing things that are very much counter to the interest of the country and he knows it," he is not completely correct. he's only almost right, not in terms of the policies he means, and ony accidentally,but there is a germ of truth to the charge. And for a GOP presidential candidate, that's actually pretty good.





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Approval Deferred

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein on Friday noted

The administration scored a big victory last night, or at least it thinks it did.

On Thursday night, the United States Senate approved by unanimous consent 27 of 63 appointments President Obama had made to federal positions which had been held up by the holds various Senators had placed. The President in his statement afterward "warned"

While this is a good first step, there are still dozens of nominees on hold who deserve a similar vote, and I will be looking for action from the Senate when it returns from recess. If they do not act, I reserve the right to use my recess appointment authority in the future.

But this may be a pyrrhic victory, if any victory at all. Klein points out

At this point in his presidency, George W. Bush had made 10 recess appointments. Over the course of his presidency, he would make almost 200. Bill Clinton made about 150. In describing recess appointments as "a rare but not unprecedented step," Obama made it harder to actually make any, because he's defined the procedure -- which, unlike the hold, is a defined constitutional power of the president rather than a courtesy observed in the Senate -- as an extraordinary last-resort. He also promised, later in the statement, that he wouldn't make any appointments this recess.

Not only have recess appointments commonly been made in the recent past, but the hold placed by the two Alabama senators, Pete Sessions and Richard Shelby, bring to mind the deals Republicans famously derided as the "Louisiana Purchase" and "Cornhusker Kickback" and are reminiscent of the "lobbying and horse-trading" decried by the President in his State of the Union address. (The hold doesn't prevent an up-and-down vote, but it would require 60 votes for cloture.)

The Senators from Airbus still are holding up the nomination of two especially impressive nominees. Frank Kendall, who would serve as Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (PDUSD) for Acquisition and Technology, "appears intent on fixing some of the urgent management and cost problems with defense acquisitions."

And then there is the matter of Dawn Johnsen, who should already be in charge of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Johnsen has withstood the confirmation process and is highly, perhaps uniquely, qualified to provide the independent, apolitical, and expert legal advice the Attorney General and the President must be given- and which President Bush so rarely received from Jay Bybee and the notorious John Yoo. But Johnsen, a supporter of abortion rights and opponent of torture, is offensive to many Republicans and Senate Majority Leader Reid refused over several months to post her nomination for a vote while his party had a 60 vote majority.

At one time, Republican Arlen Specter was an avowed opponent of Johnsen; now a Democrat, the senior Senator from Pennsylvania supports her. Ben Nelson (D-NE) apparently has remain opposed to Johnsen, but Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana has announced his intent to vote for her.

If Harry Reid believes that he and Democratic Whip Dick Durbin could not muster the 60 votes needed to impose cloture and get Dawn Johnsen approved, there is an alternative- a recess appointment for her and the 36 other nominees still being held up by the GOP. Klein believes the White House "promptly shot itself in the foot" when the President, in his statement Thursday night, said

I told Senator McConnell that if Republican senators did not release these holds, I would exercise my authority to fill critically-needed positions in the federal government temporarily through the use of recess appointments. This is a rare but not unprecedented step that many other presidents have taken.

Certainly, that does complicate any effort by Obama to make recess appointments, now that he has termed it "a rare.... step." And it is possible that Barack Obama, who ran an extraordinary, nearly flawless campaign and whose oratory may be second to none, simply goofed and painted himself into a corner.

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps the language serves an intended purpose. Once Specter held a second meeting with Johnsen and then announced his support of her, Reid had at least 59 votes. Ben Nelson contends that he was never asked to support her, and it is unlikely that Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine would have voted against cloture. But Ryan Singel at Wired/Threat Level recently argued

The FBI and telecom companies collaborated to routinely violate federal wiretapping laws for four years, as agents got access to reporters’ and citizens’ phone records using fake emergency declarations or simply asking for them....

The Obama administration retroactively legalized the entire fiasco through a secret ruling from the Office of Legal Counsel nearly two weeks ago.

That’s the same office from which John Yoo blessed President George W. Bush’s torture techniques and warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ communications that crossed the border.

Given that Johnsen would now head that same office, and one blogger at Firedoglake contends that Obama, Emanuel, and Reid

did not really want a true advocate for governmental transparency, a critic who excoriated Bush/Cheney policies on warrantless wiretapping, torture, indefinite detention, ignoring international treaties and conventions, and concentration of power in a unitary executive; all policies the Obama Administration has substantially co-opted as its own.

The nomination of Dawn Johnsen and many others is not dead. But the response of President Obama, thus far, has been- intentionally or otherwise- inadequate.