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Michelle Obama did her part and closed a somewhat purposeless first day of the Democratic convention on a positive note. She came over as strong and assured, yet approachable and not at all threatening or angry–those last two were the notes, of course, that the campaign was most anxious to avoid. Her story was touching, and their marriage reflects well on her husband. Yes, one thought, she is a remarkable woman and he did well. Also, she dealt deftly with a couple of awkward issues: of course she loves America; and words can barely do justice to her regard for Hillary Clinton. It was good stuff, well delivered.

My spirits sagged, and even then only a little, at just two points. It’s starting to annoy me that Barack keeps telling us how he turned down Wall Street for a career in “public service”. By this he means politics. Just how great a sacrifice is that? The kind of ambition that gets you into the Senate and maybe the White House is not exactly renouncing the world and all its temptations, is it? And now here we have Michelle doing the same thing. She gave up lawyering, she says, and chose “public service”–the kind that leads in due course to a 300k-plus salary. I’ve no problem with it. I just don’t want to keep being asked to admire the sacrifice.

The other dispiriting thing was the stuff with the girls at the end. They are cute, and the traditions of American politics must be observed, no doubt, but it makes me uncomfortable to see children used as political props. One ought to feel much the same way, I suppose, about spouses. At a couple of points in this campaign, when Michelle has come in for criticism, Barack said, “leave her out of this.” At those times I remember thinking, he’s right: the country is not electing her. Maybe, in fact, it is: in any event, you can’t have it both ways.

A little earlier, the ailing Ted Kennedy greatly moved the audience with a most dignified address–a speech that was all about the country and Obama, and not at all about him. And yet, as I say, the first day seemed somewhat drifting and unfocused. With three days still to go, it is too soon to complain of complacency. But the Democratic campaign is in trouble. So far, you would not know it from the mood in Denver.

Daily Kos, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, and ProgressNow have organized a week-long programme in the Big Tent, actually a medium-sized building near the convention centre. One panel including Arianna Huffington and Paul Krugman discussed the challenge of getting people to see what is obvious. “We must be willing to listen to people who disagree with us,” suggested Mrs Huffington. A novel and valuable thought.

Next, Anne-Marie Slaughter (describing herself as Mr Krugman’s boss at Princeton) asked the eponymous Kos (Markos Moulitsas), Jane Mayer (author of a new book on civil liberties and terrorism), and Van Jones (environmental campaigner) to give President Obama “five to seven minutes of advice”. They ignored her, even though she set a good example with a crisply stated agenda of her own: close the prison at Guantanamo; apply the Geneva conventions without exception or equivocation; green the economy; rebuild the international institutions so that they give the emerging powers more voice; and combat nuclear proliferation. Are you listening, Mr President?

The others, also with new books to promote, had interesting things to say about them. My reading list keeps growing. And Mr Moulitsas provided the most surprising statistic of the week. He said the median age of his readers was 45, and that he had more readers aged 65 or over than under 25. Blogging looks to be a dying industry.

The Democrats have an ill-advised fondness for celebrities, and the feeling is mutual. Stars of stage, screen and recording studio are everywhere to be seen in Denver. At a brunch co-hosted by the Service Employees International Union and the Creative Coalition—a “nonpartisan (what?) social and public policy advocacy organization”—Spike Lee, Ellen Burstyn, Matthew Modine, Alan Cumming, Barry Levinson, and a somewhat familiar-looking actress who plays a nurse on television looked on earnestly as Danny Glover called for social justice and enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Barack Obama has promised to back the law. Among other things, it would compel union recognition if more than 50 percent of a company’s workforce signed cards affirming their wish to be a member: no secret ballot required. The opportunities for intimidation are obvious. (A recent TV ad opposing the measure shows a Mafioso-type heavy offering a worker a card and a pen, as a bunch of thugs stand by.) Advocates of the law say that union-recognition elections are corrupted by employer intimidation, and the so-called card-check method is therefore necessary. Speaking as a worker, and bearing both kinds of undue pressure in mind, I would rather take my chances with a secret ballot. Other pieces of EFCA are less indefensible, and it is a shame to see them tethered to this plain infringement of civil liberty, but the unions want card-check more than all the rest, and the law’s advocates regard the measure as indivisible.

None of this was discussed over brunch, needless to say. The law was not even described: it was posited as self-evidently desirable, and that was that. The only question was how to get it passed. Send for some actors. They draw a crowd, I grant you, but I wonder whether brunch with the stars really advances the cause.

Otherwise detained when it was first broadcast, I only got around to watching the Saddleback Church encounter (video; transcript) last night.

Warren did a very nice job. I hope the network moderators were taking notes. No self-aggrandizement, no moronic gimmicks, no ceaseless quest for the gotcha moment. He asked good, searching questions in a spirit of urgent reflection, curiosity and goodwill. So it can be done.

I agree with the take of most commentators: Obama came across as thoughtful–but to a fault. His answers were too long and inconclusive. He came over as smart, interesting and admirable, but indecisive. McCain was just the opposite: direct, peremptory, energetic, impatient to take charge.

If this event were all I knew of the two candidates, I would prefer Obama, though with reservations. McCain crossed the line between concise and simplistic (not to say bombastic) too many times. Obama’s answer to the question, “At what point does a baby have human rights?”–”That’s above my pay grade”–was an evasion. (What would I have said, I wondered? Words to the same effect. Luckily I’m not running for president.) Then it got worse, as he talked about “theological perspective”, “scientific perspective” and (eek) “specificity”. Oh dear. McCain’s immediate answer, “At the moment of conception,” was as crisp and clear as you could wish. Problem is, that answer has implications which I am certain that McCain, consistent though his record may be on abortion, is not willing to confront. If it’s a choice between (a) handwringing over specificity and (b) dogmatic certainty on an issue that (in my view) does not support it, I’ll reluctantly take (a).

As for the politics, surely McCain won. Much to my surprise, given some of his recent outings, he seemed much more presidential. So I agree with David Gergen:

Heading into the candidates’ appearances on Saturday night at Saddleback Church, the conventional wisdom in politics was Barack Obama should have a clear upper hand in any joint appearance with John McCain — one the young, eloquent, cool, charismatic dude who can charm birds from the trees, the other the meandering, sometimes bumbling, old fellow who can barely distinguish Sunnis from Shiias.

Well, kiss that myth goodbye.

McCain came roaring out of the gate from the first question and was a commanding figure throughout the night as he spoke directly and often movingly about his past and the country’s future. By contrast, Obama was often searching for words and while far more thoughtful, was also less emotionally connective with his audience.

Also see this piece by Dick Polman at the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The same stylistic gap - cerebral versus visceral - was evident at several other points in the forum, again to Obama’s potential disadvantage. Such as the exchanges about the nature of evil.

Warren asked Obama: “Does evil exist, and if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it, or do we defeat it?”

Obama’s response: “Evil does exist. I mean, we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil in parents have viciously abused their children and I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely and one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world…Now, the one thing that I think is very important for us is to have humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, but, you know, a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil…And I think one thing that’s very important is having some humility in recognizing that, you know, just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t always mean that we’re going to be doing good…”

One hour later, Warren asked McCain the same question about evil and what we should do about it. McCain’s response began this way:

“Defeat it.”

Jim Fallows, though, makes a very good point. This was a pair of interviews, not a debate. Who knows where the discussion of human rights and abortion would have gone if the candidates had been able to challenge each other–if Obama had been able to test McCain on the implications of his certainties, and say, “Is it really so simple?”. Perhaps that would have made things even worse for Obama, or perhaps not. We shall see. The approaching presidential debates will be even more important that I had supposed. Shame they will be back in the hands of the TV professionals.

So far, reaction in the US to Russia’s invasion of Georgia has been all Vladimir Putin could have wished. Exhausted in every way by its experience in Iraq (a failure not much mitigated by recent progress there), its authority and sense of purpose quite depleted, the US looked slower and less decisive than Europe in its initial response, and that is saying something.

It took repeated prodding from presidential contender John McCain to draw President George W. Bush’s attention from the Beijing Olympics to the fact that Russian forces were overrunning the territory of a US ally. Then, as the White House slowly geared up its rhetoric, dispatched the secretary of state to Tbilisi and began talking vaguely of repercussions, both the administration and the goading Mr McCain were accused of war-mongering hysteria by liberal commentators and even by some conservatives.

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

I am not devoting myself full-time to following the iterations of the candidates’ tax plans–as you will soon see, that way lies insanity–but I was interested to see the article by Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s top economists, in today’s WSJ. It says, among other things, that “the top capital-gains rate for families making more than $250,000 would return to 20%” and that “the tax rate on dividends would also be 20% for families making more than $250,000.” (Both rates are currently 15%.)

Good to have that confirmed. Three weeks ago, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (which produces the most authoritative independent appraisals of the campaigns’ fiscal proposals) used new rates of 25%, not 20%, to calculate the numbers most of us have been using lately. It had inferred those tax rates from the Obama campaign’s statements and revenue projections.

The thrust of the Furman/Goolsbee article is that Obama would cut taxes overall relative to current policy, while shifting the burden from people on middle and lower incomes to the rich. Cling to that: it might be true. Unfortunately, although the piece is full of numbers, I don’t see an estimate of that net tax change, a figure of some interest. And the campaign still isn’t saying how much, or even whether, the payroll tax for families on more than $250,000 a year will rise. The campaign says it is considering options in the 2-4% range, worker and employer combined. I don’t know if the effects of that change should be included in the estimate they forget to give of the net tax change. Presumably not, because the article says this bold effort to shore up Social Security would not be activated for a decade or more.  That makes two interesting announcements. (Does it also imply a third term for President Obama?)

The article doesn’t say much about spending–except to promise that Obama would cut it, to pay for his net tax cut. Do Democrats realize that Obama is promising to cut public spending overall? This was news to me. The big-ticket item on the spending side, of course, is health care. Obama’s website explains how the costs of his health reform, estimated at a surprisingly modest $50 billion-65 billion a year, will be met: “The Obama plan will realize tremendous savings within the health care system to help finance the plan. The additional revenue needed to fund the up-front investments in technology and to help people who cannot afford health insurance is more than covered by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for people making more than $250,000 per year, as they are scheduled to do.” Ah, there you’ve lost me. The tax plan promises a net tax cut. The revenues from taxing the rich more heavily will be more than spent on cutting everybody else’s taxes. There’s no surplus left over to set against the cost of health care reform. There’s a shortfall.

The article also says: “Overall, in an Obama administration, the top 1% of households — people with an average income of $1.6 million per year — would see their average federal income and payroll tax rate increase from 21% today to 24%, less than the 25% these households would have paid under the tax laws of the late 1990s.” I need to find the footnotes for that one. The Tax Policy Center, in tables refreshed today, says that the average federal tax rate on the top 1% of tax units (including business income and the estate tax) would rise by 7.2 percentage points to 35.6% by 2012, fully phased in. That is a hefty rise.

The TPC’s July 23rd document described Obama’s then-proposed tax increases on upper-income earners as “enormous”. But obviously that assessment will need to be updated.

I don’t think so. Read this piece by Josh Green and the accompanying haul of documents from inside the Clinton campaign. This is the candidate who ran on management expertise–on “actions speak louder than words”, on the ability to get things done. Hillary, it appears, is a pitiful manager.

Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.

Joe Klein accuses Robert Kagan of warmongering.

When a column starts off like this:

“The details of who did what to precipitate Russia’s war against Georgia are not very important. Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.

“The events of the past week will be remembered that way, too.”

..the author has got to be a neoconservative pushing for the next war. In this case, it’s Robert Kagan, girding for a new twilight struggle with the Sovi…uh, sorry: that was a couple of twilight struggles ago…Russia.

I don’t follow. Kagan’s main point is simply that Russia remains a dangerous and assertive rival to the West.

Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Russia’s attack on sovereign Georgian territory marked the official return of history, indeed to an almost 19th-century style of great-power competition, complete with virulent nationalisms, battles for resources, struggles over spheres of influence and territory, and even — though it shocks our 21st-century sensibilities — the use of military power to obtain geopolitical objectives. Yes, we will continue to have globalization, economic interdependence, the European Union and other efforts to build a more perfect international order. But these will compete with and at times be overwhelmed by the harsh realities of international life that have endured since time immemorial. The next president had better be ready.

If I wanted to criticise that view I think I’d say it was too much a statement of the obvious, rather than attacking it as insanely militant. As Klein himself acknowledges,

To be sure, Russia’s assault on Georgia is an outrage.

And yet, he continues

But it is important, yet again, to call out the endless neoconservative search for new enemies.

I cannot see that underlining the significance of an outrageous (in Klein’s own view) Russian assault on a US ally (Georgian soldiers serve in Iraq) constitutes a desperate search for new enemies. What a strange reaction to these events.

Continue reading "Georgia (and Ukraine)"

The response in the US to startling new allegations that the White House directed the forgery of evidence to support its case for the war in Iraq has been surprisingly muted so far. The charges may be false, of course, but if they are seriously examined and turn out to be true, this is – or ought to be – a Watergate-sized scandal.

Ron Suskind is a heavyweight: a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and the author of a well-regarded book on the administration’s security policies, The One Per Cent Doctrine. His new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, which was published last week, contains the extraordinary new charge. It says that late in 2003 the White House ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to forge a memo dated July 2001 from Tahir Jalil Habbush, Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chief, to Saddam himself, affirming that Mohammed Atta, the September 11 2001 bomber, had contacts with the regime and that Iraq had an ongoing weapons of mass destruction programme.

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

I refuse to give up on a carbon tax. In a new column for National Journal (the link expires at the end of next week), I explain why, and criticise the approaches of both Obama and McCain to energy policy.

Much the most important part of [their] programs is the seemingly brave commitment both have made to a long-term cap-and-trade regime for control of carbon. This could indeed be, to use Al Gore’s favorite word, a “transformative” undertaking. Obama sets a goal to reduce carbon emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. McCain’s goal is a bit less ambitious–a cut to 60 percent below the 1990 benchmark by 2050. Both are promising, in effect, a wholesale restructuring of the U.S. economy around the goal of carbon abatement.

Let us assume this is desirable. Do they mean it? Do they understand what these commitments entail? (If they do, they certainly aren’t spelling it out to voters.) Is there any chance that either goal will be met?

You have to wonder. The country’s mood on global warming has changed–most people now seem to take the danger seriously–but public opinion on energy policy has two contradictory strands. People are worried about rising temperatures and changing climate; but they are also worried about expensive gas. If you are serious about reducing carbon emissions, expensive gas is not a problem; it is an unavoidable part of the solution.

Politicians of both parties take it for granted that the American voter cannot tolerate an explicit tax on carbon, which would be the best way to curb greenhouse gases. This supposedly immovable resistance is why the presidential candidates advocate a system of tradable emission permits instead. But if cap-and-trade binds tightly enough to make a difference, it will necessarily make carbon-releasing fuels more expensive. The system cannot work any other way: It can succeed only by attaching an implicit tax to carbon.

Do Obama and McCain think voters are too stupid to see this? When fuel gets more expensive, won’t voters object just as strenuously as they would have if a carbon tax had been imposed in the first place? You cannot hope to transform the economy and have nobody notice–can you?

And another thing: In setting their bold targets for 2050, Obama and McCain know they will not be held accountable for failing to meet them. Any such failure is 42 years away and somebody else’s problem. Politically, their best bet may be to take credit for seeming to confront the problem while deferring real action and its unpopular consequences another four or eight years.

Europe’s politicians have already worked out their own way of seeming bold on climate change while actually doing nothing: It is called the Kyoto Protocol. America’s promised cap-and-trade system could easily go the same way. Willingness to advocate an explicit carbon tax–or at any rate, to spell out the equivalent consequences of a binding cap-and-trade system–is the real test of whether either candidate is ready to confront this issue. So far, both are failing that test.