My friend Matt Miller defends Obama against my wounding accusation that the president is a bold progressive liberal. I’ve got it all wrong, says Matt, who is also a fairly progressive liberal (though paid by public radio to pose as “the voice of the political centre“). In fact, he says, the president is a defender of the status quo.

Also, and here is where I think Matt crosses a line, he calls me mild-mannered. No disrespect, but Bolton men find that kind of talk hard to take from a big girl’s blouse from LA. Continue reading "Mild-mannered remarks on tax deductions"

I always enjoy Camille Paglia’s gently understated commentaries in Salon, and this one, divided about equally between her views on how Obama is doing and the joys of carnival in Salvador da Bahia, was no exception. “Oh, the incestuous mediocrity of American politics and media–compared to the splendors of Brazil!” My sentiment exactly, though they pay me to focus on the first. Continue reading "Quipping and chuckling"

Barack Obama affirmed the key themes of his education agenda on Tuesday.

1) “Investing in early childhood initiatives” like Head Start;

2) “Encouraging better standards and assessments” by focusing on testing itineraries that better fit our kids and the world they live in;

3) “Recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers” by giving incentives for a new generation of teachers and for new levels of excellence from all of our teachers.

4) “Promoting innovation and excellence in America’s schools” by supporting charter schools, reforming the school calendar and the structure of the school day.

5) “Providing every American with a quality higher education–whether it’s college or technical training.”

Good stuff. And there was this characteristically Barackian sentiment too:

It is time to start rewarding good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones.

But then on Wednesday he signed the omnibus spending bill. Aside from being laden with thousands of  earmarks he had earlier promised to stop, this included something else, as Roland Martin notes:

When President Obama signs the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, there will be shouts of joy from both sides as Republicans and Democrats get their cherished earmarks. Yet tucked into that bill is an amendment pushed by the president’s former colleague in the Senate, Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, who used his influence to essentially kill the District of Columbia school vouchers program.

Oh sure, it will be portrayed that the Democrats aren’t killing the program, but the initiative calls for no new students to be allowed entry, unless approved by Congress and the District of Columbia City Council. And considering that the teachers union has such a death grip on both Democratic-controlled institutions, you can forget about that happening.

Refreshing to hear a Democrat talk about a union’s “death grip”. Onward to card check!

When I checked the New York Times mid-morning, I was surprised to see that this was the most emailed story:

As the rain slanted down onto the vineyard around Copain Wine Cellars, just outside this town in northern Sonoma County, Wells Guthrie, the proprietor, poured a glass of one of his 2006 pinot noirs. The wine was fresh and light with aromas of flowers and red fruit. Even in the gray dimness of his tasting room I could see my fingers on the other side of the glass through the pale ruby wine.

It was vibrant and refreshing, nothing like the dark, plush, opulent wines that have made California pinot noir so popular. Mr. Guthrie used to make wines more along those heavier lines, but not anymore. After the vinous equivalent of a conversion experience, with his 2006 vintage he renounced the fruit-bomb style in favor of wines that emphasize freshness and delicacy. “It got to the point where I didn’t want the wine to be fatter than the food,” he said. “Wine should make you think of what you want to eat.”

From Mendocino and Sonoma through the Santa Cruz Mountains and Arroyo Grande south to the rolling hills of Santa Barbara County, a rebellion is brewing…

I’m not keen on that fruit-bomb style myself.

My column in the current National Journal discusses some of the lessons that Europe has for the Obama administration [the link expires in two weeks].

During PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer last Friday, the program’s resident pundits, David Brooks and Mark Shields, had an interesting exchange about President Obama’s first budget. They agreed that the administration aimed to be “transformative” — and Brooks conceded, “I think we all want that.” The real question, he said, is how transformative.

Brooks: “The debate will be over the nature of it. If it’s a transformative relationship that basically keeps the American model with repair, you’ll get a lot of people in the center for it. If it’s a transformative relationship that turns us into France, with a consumption tax and a much bigger federal government, you will not.”

Shields: “That’s a straw man, turning it into France. That’s not the case.”

Is it really a straw man? I was hoping that Brooks would press Shields to say what exactly it is about France he objects to, what makes him recoil at the parallel. Where has France gone too far, in the view of an American liberal?

Presumably, liberals approve of the universal health care, the generous and extensive welfare state, the comprehensive worker protections, the stricter regulation, the vastly more-generous subsidies for higher education, the stronger unions, the higher taxes, and especially the higher taxes on the rich. At least I assume they do, since they advocate all of those policies for the United States. Have I left something out?

As far as social and economic policies are concerned, Democrats really ought to be holding up France (or maybe Italy or Germany) as the model to which they aspire. The fact that they do not — that they even deny the validity of the comparison — seems revealing. No doubt it is partly a matter of tactical calculation. The idea that the United States should model itself on any other country, rather than offer itself as the model for the world, would be new to most American voters and would take some getting used to. But I do not think it is just that.

You can read the rest of the column here.

At a recent seminar at the Aspen Institute I was intrigued and impressed by a proposal of Stuart Brafman, a retired executive from the mortgage insurance industry and a regional director of the Office of Thrift Supervision during the S&L crisis. He applauded the Obama administration’s plan to avoid mortgage foreclosures, but argued that a revived Depression-era initiative needed to be put in place to cope with the still-significant number of foreclosures that would happen regardless. He has written the idea up for American Banker magazine [you need to register to get a free trial].

Though the Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention plan promises to help some homeowners meet their mortgage payments, many foreclosures are still expected from borrowers who fall outside the plan or who default despite receiving financial assistance. These foreclosures will impede the real estate market’s recovery, which economists agree is necessary for the economy to rebound.

Meanwhile, families should not have to agonize over relocating when the foreclosed property’s early sale is unlikely. It is best for the borrower to remain in the house, because vacant properties attract vandals, deteriorate more rapidly and promote neighborhood degradation.

There is a way to stem the tide of foreclosures while generating cash for lenders to make new loans and to enhance capital.

Simply put, the government should step in and purchase from lenders, at a discount, properties underlying mortgages that are about to be foreclosed. This is a new twist on a program that worked during the Great Depression.

A government agency should be organized for the mortgage rescue. It might be named the Mortgage Recovery Corp. The MRC would agree to purchase homes securing the defaulted mortgage for 80% of the dwellings’ current, fair market value. A participating lender would be required to complete the foreclosure, thereby wiping out the borrower’s interest and all secondary liens, and deliver marketable title to the MRC. The borrower would not be evicted in the process.

The borrower could elect to stay in the house as a tenant. The rent paid to the MRC would be 25% of the household’s gross income, even if it is nominal. That amount is a time-honored, prudent benchmark for family housing expense. The tenant would have the opportunity, but not the legal right, to repurchase the residence at its then fair market value before the government sells it to another party, provided the tenant is occupying the home and the rent is current.

Lenders should be willing participants, because they are unlikely to recover more than 80% of a mortgaged property’s value net of the costs for loss of interest, maintenance, taxes, repairs and brokerage commission. Furthermore, a lender could recover as much or more from the MRC immediately instead of waging a prolonged sales effort in a severely depressed market. The up-front cash proceeds could be promptly reinvested in new loans to qualified borrowers, which would stimulate the economy. The new financing would improve a lender’s earnings and capital position. Finally, the costly overhead associated with administering a portfolio of foreclosed, vacant houses in a declining market could be avoided.

The whole piece is well worth reading.

On this page last week I argued that Barack Obama’s first budget showed him to be more of a left-leaning liberal than I and many others – sceptics and admirers alike – had previously supposed. People I respect have accused me of going off the deep end about this, or of neglecting Mr Obama’s tactical finesse, or both.

Mr Obama is calling for little that he did not promise in the campaign, I am reminded, so he cannot be accused of springing a surprise. I welcome many of the budget’s main elements, notably healthcare reform and the cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, and the president made it clear all along that he wished to reverse the Bush tax cuts for the high paid. So the revelation that Mr Obama is a progressive liberal must arise from the proposal to curb high earners’ income-tax deductions. That was a surprise, but a small matter: hence the charge that I am getting carried away.

Alternatively, I am told, Mr Obama is playing a shrewder game. Like any good negotiator, he has adopted a maximalist opening position. He expects to be walked back from it, ending up where he wanted to be in the first place, with a more centrist plan than the one he pitched.

The remainder of the column can be read here. Please post comments here.

I have a column in this weekend’s National Journal on American exceptionalism and the lure of the European model. I’ll post it as as soon as it goes online–but meanwhile I recommend this piece by Roger Cohen from the NYT on the same subject. An excellent column, and I agreed with every word.

I lived for about a decade, on and off, in France and later moved to the United States. Nobody in their right mind would give up the manifold sensual, aesthetic and gastronomic pleasures offered by French savoir-vivre for the unrelenting battlefield of American ambition were it not for one thing: possibility.

You know possibility when you breathe it. For an immigrant, it lies in the ease of American identity and the boundlessness of American horizons after the narrower confines of European nationhood and the stifling attentions of the European nanny state, which has often made it more attractive not to work than to work. High French unemployment was never much of a mystery.

Americans, at least in their imaginations, have always lived at the new frontier; French frontiers have not shifted much in centuries.

Churn is the American way. Companies are born, rise, fall and die. Others come along to replace them. The country’s remarkable capacity for innovation, for reinvention, is tied to its acceptance of failure. Or always has been. Without failure, the culture of risk fades. Without risk, creativity withers. Save the zombies and you sabotage the vital.

If America loses sight of these truths, it will cease to be itself.